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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 






Tenure and Toil; 



OR, 



RIGHTS AND WRONGS 



OF 



PROPERTY AND LABOR. 




JOHN GIBBONS, LL.D., 

OF THE CHICAGO BAR. 




IC 



PHILADELPHIA: 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY. 
1888. 



H 8 ! 1 1 

■ Gr44- 



Copyright, 1888, by John Gibbons, LL.D. 




IITTKODTTGTION". 



Property is man's domain, labor the sum of his 
existence. To own is the passion of life, to do is the 
necessity of being. The germ and growth of the for- 
mer are furnished and fostered by the latter. Thus it 
is that Tenure is the prerogative of Toil, which to 
abridge would be violence, to abolish, sacrilege. How 
best to employ the one so as to most fully enjoy the other 
has been a burden to philanthropy, a foil to statecraft, 
and a perplexity to human wisdom ever since man re- 
ceived his title-deeds to earth, sealed by the anathema 
of toil. 

The author does not arrogate the ability to solve 
problems which have eluded the wisdom of philos- 
ophers and sages in all the ages, nor does he claim 
that his are infallible specifics for all the social and 
political ills which afflict society. The carper and icon- 
oclast are but thorns and stumbling-blocks in the path 
of social progress and political reform. Where the 
author seeks to modify or abolish existing conditions 
and institutions, he proposes plans and furnishes material 
with which to remodel and replace them. Whether his 
plans and material shall prove acceptable and effectual 
thought and time must determine. The weaknesses and 
wrongs which seem inherent in our system of political 



4 INTRODUCTION. 

economy, as pointed out by the author, are seen and ad- 
mitted by all ; yet he is aware that the reforms pro- 
posed and remedies suggested will provoke opposition 
in that they comprehend a radical departure from pres- 
ent conditions, but, subjected to the practical analysis 
of common sense and to the touchstone of actual appli- 
cation, he believes they would prove potent factors in 
equalizing social conditions and promoting political 
advancement. It is true, what is proposed may rightly 
be deemed innovation, and it is also true that innovation 
is not always reform, yet reformation cannot be had 
without progression, and progress involves not only 
change, but advance. Change is the philosophy of life, 
progress the science of utility. 

The time is at hand when America, if she is in any 
manner to shape and perfect her destiny, must not only 
determine the true goal of social organization, but also 
to walk in the best and safest way of attaining that goal ; 
and every American who feels a concern for the good of 
his fellow-men, who desires to act intelligently upon 
the political proposals of the day, who aspires to wield 
a healthful influence on the moral and material growth 
of the republic, should make special endeavor to 
understand the social and industrial problems, beside 
which all others are but empty queries. A recognition 
of this duty prompts the writing of this work. 

That there is something radically wrong in our 
national polity Cannot be gainsaid. The unrest and dis- 
content felt and heard in every line of social and indus- 
trial life are but the protests of a struggling humanity 
against hardships and oppressions growing out of the 



INTRODUCTION. 5 

inequalities of conditions which are the natural and 
necessary outgrowth of defective and perverted laws. 
The murmur of the millions is but a plea for justice. 
It is the part of wisdom to hearken unto these protests, 
to inquire as to their cause, and, on finding it, to seek its 
removal. Humanity demands that this plea should be 
heard and answered. 

It is worse than idle to point to the material wealth 
abounding on every hand as evidence that peace and 
plenty are within the reach of all. Wilfully blind is 
he who does not see want stalking beside wealth at 
every turn. Within the shadow of the mansion where 
comfort is forgotten in luxury stands the hut where 
privation degenerates into want. Upon the boulevards 
opulent idleness feasts upon tempting viands, while on 
the back streets and in the alleys industry feeds upon 
husks. 

The soul of popular states is equality ; and co-opera- 
tion is rapidly being recognized as the true social form. 
This is the basis and inspiration of modern progress, 
social, industrial, and political. It is the ethics of the 
advanced thought of to-day, — no romance, but realis- 
tic. Labor and Capital must be made sharers in the 
profits which are the joint product of both. Trusts, 
capital's conspiracy against the right to live, must be 
destroyed at whatever cost. As home-owners are sel- 
dom malcontents, but are always true safeguards against 
social disturbances and industrial revolts, the deserving 
poor in every community should be afforded means to 
build for themselves homes on the public domain 
which Providence provided as the common heritage of 



Q INTRODUCTION. 

the people. Speculation in the public lands, which 
always degenerates into peculation, should be abolished, 
and ownership itself restrained within such limits that 
there will be ample acreage for all. 

In commercial greatness this republic is destined 
to exceed the record of all other nations, and, with it 
perforce allied, all its concomitant evils, — the outgrowth 
of wealth and luxury enjoyed by the few, and of 
penury and want suffered by the many. Foster the 
farm, the mart will maintain its own mastery. 

" Where wealth and freedom reigns, contentment fails ; 
And honor sinks where commerce long prevails." 

Build up the home, for it is the centre of love and 
peace, of harmony and happiness, of social order and 
patriotic devotion. Make this a nation of homesteaders 
and peasant proprietors, and our institutions will con- 
tinue to be in the future, as they have been in the past, 
the model and marvel of the world. 



CONTENTS. 



BOOK I. 



THE RIGHT OP PROPERTY AND THE HISTORY OP TENURES. 
OHAPTEB PAGE 

I.— The Basis of the Eight of Property 11 

II.: — McGlynn's Basic Principle 16 

III.— McGlynn and the Angel 22 

IV. — The Divine Origin of the Eight of Property ... 29 

V.— McGlynn's Mistake 36 

VI. — Property Eights recognized in All Ages 43 

VII. — The Heroic Age of Greece 47 

VIII.— Eoman Polity 50 

IX. — Eoman Property Eights 55 

X.— ABesume 62 



BOOK II. 

THE ORIGIN, GROWTH, AND DECADENCE OF FEUDAL TENURES. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I.— The Village-Mark 72 

II. — Disintegration of the Eoman Empire 77 

III. — Germanic Feudalism 82 

IV. — Anglo-Saxon Feudalism 87 

V. — Decline and Overthrow of Feudal Servitude in Eng- 
land 93 

VI. — Extirpation of Feudalism in France . 97 

VII. — Extinction of Feudalism in Prussia 103 

VIII. — Decrement of Feudalism in Eussia 108 

7 



8 CONTENTS. 



BOOK III. 

THE RIGHT OF PROPERTY AND THE STABILITY OE TENURES. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. — The Eight of Property defined 118 

II. — How this -Eight is Best regulated and enjoyed . . 118 

III.— The Subject continued 122 

IV. — Eights, Vested and Prospective 128 

V. — Subversion of Law is Invasion of Eight 133 

YI. — Security under the Constitution 139 

VII.— The Stability of Tenure 145 

VIII.— The Fallacies of George's Land-Tax Theory ... 150 

IX. — George's Self-Eefutation 155 

BOOK IV. 

labor; its wrongs and their remedies. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

L— Labor 162 

II. — Capital should share Profits with Labor 167 

III. — Strikes and Lock-Outs prevented by Arbitration . 172 

IV. — The Glaris Artisan an Independent Commoner . 178 

V. — Pullman as an Ideal Industrial Community . . . 183 

VI.— The Pullman Artisan a Tenant at Will 187 

VIL— Action demanded. What shall it be ? 192 

VIII. — The State has wrought the Euin. Let her supply 

the Eemedy 196 

IX. — Compensate Employes injured by Defective Ma- 
chinery 199 

X. — The Eemedy ; its Economy and Beneficence .... 203 

XL — Enforce the Prompt Payment of Wages 207 

BOOK V. 
limitation oe ownership and prohibition oe trusts. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. — Unearned Increment 213 

II. — The Greed of Wealth imperils its own Safety . . 219 

III. — Inequality of Conditions Humanity's Wrong . . 225 

IV. — Wealth should bear the Burden of Taxation . . . 231 



CONTENTS. 9 

CHAPTER PAGE 

V. — Trusts— Capital's Conspiracy against the Eight to 

Live 235 

VL— Other Trusts . . 240 

VII.— The Hydra Trust and Quintet of the Shambles . . 244 

VIII. — The Coal Conspiracy 248 

IX.— What shall we do with Them? . 253 

X. — Crush Trusts by Legislation 257 

BOOK VI. 

DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION AND DIVISION OP PROPERTY. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. — Those that want and Those that have 260 

II. — An Equitable Division of Property demanded . . 265 
III. — The Great City the Fruitful Source of National 

Peril 270 

IV. — The Hovels where Homeless Thousands dwell . . 274 

V. — Land-Homes for the Homeless 279 

VI. — Use the Treasury Surplus to pay the Cost, the Home- 
Owner will pay the Profit 285 

VII.— National Perils and Problems of To-day 290 

APPENDIX. 

Convict Labor. Legislation proposed 299 

A Bill for an Act relating to Convict Labor 300 

The Encroachments of Convict Labor upon Free Labor . 310 



TENURE AND TOIL. 



BOOK I. 



THE RIGHT OF PROPERTY AND THE HISTORY 
OF TENURES. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE BASIS OF THE RIGHT OF PROPERTY. 

Next to the right of life and liberty, there is noth- 
ing which so potently and pleasurably impresses the 
imagination and so interweaves itself in the affections 
of mankind as the right of property. To know the 
basis upon which this right is founded, the steps 
whereby one man acquired that sole and positive au- 
thority which he claims and exercises over a certain 
piece of property to the exclusion of the claim of any 
other man, it will be necessary to trace the origin of 
society and the history of property back to the infancy 
of the world. 

In the early ages of the world, before states and 

kingdoms were formed, the family existed, and was 

governed by its paternal head, .who was the arbiter 

11 



12 TENURE AND TOIL. 

and judge of whatever contests and divisions might 
arise within it; the natural legislator over his little 
society. The laws which paternal wisdom established 
for its guidance being dictated by no other motive than 
to promote the general welfare, were observed as an 
hereditary polity, and the penalty for their breach en- 
forced with paternal tenderness. 

Whatever visionary speculations may have been ad- 
vanced by fanciful writers as to the origin of property 
and the mode in which the right to a specific thing be- 
came actually vested in one man to the exclusion of all 
others, there is no period in the history of civilized na- 
tions in which the conditions verify the theory that 
property was ever common in the sense that each one 
took from the public stock to his own use such things 
as his fancy favored or desires demanded. Such a 
theory may be deduced from the history of property 
and the mode of its enjoyment among savage tribes 
whose history is recent as compared with that recorded 
in the Pentateuch. In human history, civilization pre- 
ceded barbarism. The latter is a condition wrought by 
the decadence and decomposition of the former. 

In the history of the first family (and for all historic 
purposes the Pentateuch, or first five books of the Bible, 
it is generally conceded, is the most venerable monu- 
ment of antiquity) we are informed that Abel was a 
shepherd and Cain a husbandman : that Cain offered 
of the fruits of the earth gifts to the Lord. Abel of- 
fered of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat : and 
the Lord had respect to Abel and to his offerings. But 
to Cain and his offerings he had no regard : and Cain 



THE BASIS OF THE RIGHT OF PROPERTY. 13 

was exceedingly angry. From this it is reasonable to 
suppose that there arose, to a certain degree, sole or in- 
dividual ownership of property, both real and personal, 
in the person who occupied or possessed it. 

When mankind increased in numbers and families 
multiplied, diverse motives gave rise to different laws. 
As human society grew more and more refined, com- 
forts and conveniences, such as habitations for shelter 
and safety and raiment for warmth and decency, were 
devised to render life more easy and enjoyable ; and 
then it became necessary to entertain conceptions of 
more permanent dominion over external things than 
that attaching to the mere right of possession, which 
existed only so long as the act of possession lasted. No 
man would be solicitous to provide either shelter or 
raiment so long as he had only a usufructuary prop- 
erty in them, which ceased the instant that he quitted 
possession ; if, as soon as he walked out of his tent or 
pulled off his garment, the next stranger who came by 
would have a right to inhabit the one and to wear the 
other. "In the case of habitations, in particular, it 
was natural to observe that even the brute creation, to 
whom everything else was common, maintained a kind 
of permanent property in their dwellings, especially for 
the protection of their young ; that the birds of the air 
had nests, and the beasts of the field had caverns, the 
invasion of which they esteemed a flagrant injustice, 
and would sacrifice their lives to preserve them." 
Whether we admit that " necessity begat property," or 
contend that the idea of property was the normal re- 
sultant of the evolution of natural forces, it would be 

2 



14 TENURE AND TOIL. 

irrational to assume that any man would till the earth 
if another might, opportunity offering, seize upon and 
enjoy the fruits of his industry and labor. 

The true theory, grounded in reason and verified by 
the philosophy of human events, is that the right of 
property, like the right of liberty, finds its basic prin- 
ciple in the law of natural justice, and its recognition 
and support find effective expression in the law of civil 
society. The family is ordained of God. Civil society 
in conception and organization is but the expansive ap- 
plication of the family principle. Its multiform and 
complicate relations are but radiations from the family 
centre, even when in enlarged combinations constituting 
the polities of tribes, states, and governments. 

In process of time, the family being divided into 
many branches, each of which had its head, whose 
various interests and characters might interrupt the 
general tranquillity, it became necessary to intrust one 
person with the government of the whole. The person 
so chosen eventually assumed the title and authority of 
king. To him a throne was erected and a sceptre given. 
Homage was paid him, officers assigned him, and 
guards appointed for the security of his person. Trib- 
utes were granted him, and he was invested with full 
power to maintain the public peace by a uniform ad- 
ministration of justice. 

At the dawn of political history each tribe had its 
chief or king, whose aspirations found full scope within 
the limits of his own narrow realm. But those in- 
evitable broils which destroy peace between neighbors ; 
envy of rival kings ; a lawless and restless spirit ; a 



THE BASIS OF THE RIGHT OF PRO PE RTF. 15 

propensity for war or a desire of conquest ; or the am- 
bition to exhibit superior prowess, caused the king of 
one tribe or country to invade the territory of another. 
These invasions often resulted in the complete subju- 
gation of the conquered, whose possessions became the 
spoils of the conqueror and gradually extended the 
limits of his kingdom. Prompted by diverse propen- 
sities, or impelled by different interests, kings utilized 
their victories in various ways. To some the van- 
quished were but slaves, and in refraining from taking 
their lives the conqueror deemed himself generous be- 
yond measure, while he robbed them and their families 
of their property, their homes, and their freedom ; re- 
duced them to servitude; compelled them to perform 
the most menial and servile drudgery ; driving them to 
dig and delve deep in the earth for the precious min- 
erals simply to gratify his own mercenary greed ; 
hence arose the division of mankind into two classes, 
masters and slaves, lords and vassals. 

Through long centuries warfare between these two 
classes was waged with varying fortunes and diverse 
results, the one striving not only to retain but to ex- 
tend its despotic power, the other struggling to es- 
cape from the bondage of tyranny and attain freedom 
of thought and action. Every effort made for the 
redress of human wrongs or to gain and defend the 
sacred rights of person or property, whether, failing, 
dishonored as rebellion or, succeeding, dignified as rev- 
olution, in the world's annals, but lifted humanity a 
measure higher in the scale of progress and brought it 
a step nearer universal liberty. Each of these heroic 



16 TENURE AND TOIL. 

endeavors gathered strength and momentum from the 
preceding until they culminated in that grand climac- 
teric — the American Revolution — which wrought the 
political apotheosis of mankind. 

While in this nineteenth century we may justly 
boast of having reached the very climax of political 
freedom, yet the lord and vassal of mediaeval feudal- 
ism find their prototypes in the money baron and in- 
dustrial serf of to-day. The accumulation of vast 
fortunes by the few, creating corporations with absolute 
control over the ways and means of doing and living, 
dictating the enactments of legislative bodies, per- 
verting the administration of justice, prescribing rules 
of action for executive officials, and, in the arrogance 
of their plenary powers, ignoring or crushing individ- 
ual rights and interests, it may be well to ask, Can our 
loudly-vaunted political freedom much longer endure 
even as the shadow of the substance so dearly won and 
once prized so sacredly? 



CHAPTER II. 

mcglynn's basic principle. 

The Rev. Edward McGlynn, D.D., in his lecture 
on " The Cross of the New Crusade," says, " It is the 
object of this crusade of ours to preach the truth that 
shall make men see clearly what is the cause of the 



M 1 GLYNN S BASIC PRINCIPLE. 17 

evident injustice that condemns the mass of men to toil, 
and in some instances increasingly depriving them of 
what they produce by their toil. We assert that the 
one prime reason of the injustice that is done in de- 
priving labor frequently of the opportunity of finding 
employment, and when it does find employment de- 
priving it of the full equivalent for what it produces, 
is the constantly-increasing monopoly by a privileged 
class of the general bounties of nature, which belong 
by the law of nature, and of nature's God, not to a 
class but to the whole human family. 

" The private ownership of the general bounties of 
nature is the one supreme cause of all causes of the 
enslavement of labor, and that condition of things 
which deprives labor of a full equivalent for what it 
produces by its exertion. 

" That all men have, by the law of nature, and 
therefore by the law of God, an equal right to these 
general bounties can be readily demonstrated by a very 
brief argument. These truths are in consonance with 
religion and Christian philosophy." 

Whether the theories of the reverend doctor " are in 
consonance with religion and Christian philosophy," it is 
not my purpose to question. As I am a layman and 
he a doctor of divinity, I would not presume to ques- 
tion the soundness of his views from the stand-point of 
"religion or Christian philosophy." I shall simply 
endeavor to show that his notions of natural justice are 
inconsistent, illogical, and at variance with reason and 
common sense. 

"The idea of property," he says, "comes only to 
b 2* 



18 TENURE AND TOIL. 

men from the idea of making, from the idea of pro- 
ducing. The idea of property among men comes first 
from the consciousness that men have of owning them- 
selves. Man owns himself, and therefore he owns and 
controls his own labor. He may work upon this ma- 
terial or that. He is free to choose what he shall do, 
and where he shall do it, and, out of given materials, 
what he shall make. And when, by the free choice 
of his will and the free exercise of his labor, out of the 
general storehouse of nature, he produces something, 
that something is his to hold, to own, to use, to give 
away, to sell, and even to destroy, because he has made 
it. Thus he acquires the idea and the right of owner- 
ship. It is, as it were, a translation of his labor, of 
his time, his patience, and his skill into the form and 
the place that he gives to that portion of the general 
bounties of nature. He is with his cup dipping water 
from the stream, he is with his line and rod getting 
fish from the stream, and is with other instruments 
digging and hewing a block of stone from the quarry. 
Out of that block with mallet and chisel, if he has 
the artistic skill and vision to see a sleeping beauty, 
he makes haste to chisel away the larger parts to reveal 
the angel that he sees imprisoned there, and that angel 
is his to give away, to keep, to sell, and even to destroy, 
because he has made it. 

" While he has not made the raw material, he has 
appropriated that portion of the general bounties of 
nature legitimately, and no other man can have the 
right to claim joint ownership in that. If two. men 
should come to the banks of a river, and one should 



M' GLYNN'S BASIC PRINCIPLE. 19 

fish all day and the other should sleep all day, the 
basket of fish would belong to the fisherman, and the 
reward of the other would be the rest and the refresh- 
ment that he had enjoyed. It would be the same with 
the block of marble. The idea of property comes from 
making." * 

*I fail to find in the learned doctor's elegant lecture a thought 
that is practical or even original. In chapter i., Book VII., of 
" Progress and Poverty," in answer to a series of interrogatories 
as to what constitutes the rightful basis of property, George says : 

"Asa man belongs to himself, so his labor when put in con- 
crete form belongs to him. And for this reason, that which a man 
makes or produces is his own — as against all the world — to enjoy 
or to destroy, to use, to exchange, or to give. No one else can 
rightfully claim it, and his exclusive right to it involves no wrong 
to any one else. Thus there is to everything produced by human 
exertion a clear and indisputable title to exclusive possession and 
enjoyment, which is perfectly consistent with justice, as it de- 
scends from the original producer, in whom it vested by natural 
law. The pen with which I am writing is justly mine. ISTo other 
human being can rightfully lay claim to it, for in me is the title 
of the producers who made it. It has become mine because trans- 
ferred to me by the stationer, to whom it was transferred by the 
importer, who obtained the exclusive right to it by transfer from 
the manufacturer, in whom, by the same process of purchase, 
vested the rights of those who dug the material from the ground 
and shaped it into a pen. Thus my exclusive right of ownership 
in the pen springs from the natural right of the individual to the 
use of his own faculties. . . . 

" The equal right of all men to the use of land is as clear as 
their equal right to breathe the air, — it is a right proclaimed by 
the fact of their existence. For we cannot suppose that some men 
have a right to be in this world and others no right. 

"If we are all here by the equal permission of the Creator, we 
are all here with an equal title to the enjoyment of his bounty, — 
with an equal right to the use of all that nature so impartially 



20 TENURE AND TOIL. 

Let us pursue the doctor's fish-story to its logical 
conclusion, and see what becomes of his theory of the 
law of natural justice when subjected to the analysis 
of plain, homely common sense. When the industrious 
fisherman has filled his basket with fish from the store- 
house of nature, the man who had slept all day awakes 
and demands an equal division of the basket of fish. 
" This demand," says the doctor, " would be unjust 
and unreasonable, and to insist upon it would be con- 
trary to the law of natural justice." Right! Now, 
then, the man who fished all day while the other slept 
takes his basket of fish to market, sells it, and receives 
as an equivalent therefor one dollar in cash, and this 
dollar, the doctor says, he has the right to keep, to use, 
to enjoy, or destroy, because it is the compensation, the 



offers. This is a right which is natural and inalienable ; it is a 
right which vests in every human being as he enters the world, 
and which during his continuance in the world can be limited 
only by the equal rights of others. There is in nature no such thing 
as a fee-simple in land. There is on earth no power which can 
rightfully make a grant of exclusive ownership in land. If all 
existing men were to unite to grant away their equal rights, they 
could not grant away the rights of those who follow them. For 
what are we but tenants for a day ? Have we made the earth, that 
we should determine the rights of those who after us shall tenant 
it in their turn? The Almighty, who created the earth for man 
and man for the earth, has entailed it upon all the generations of 
the children of men by a decree written upon the constitution of 
all things, — a decree which no human action can bar and no pre- 
scription determine. Let the parchments be ever so many, or 
possession ever so long, natural justice can recognize no right in 
one man to the possession and enjoyment of land that is not 
equally the right of all his fellows." 



M' GLYNN'S BASIC PRINCIPLE. 21 

reward of his labor, because " the laborer is worthy of 
his hire." The fisherman, therefore, is entitled to his 
basket of fish because by his labor he has taken and 
appropriated them from the hand of nature. He may 
eat them, give them away, or sell them. So far the 
doctor construes the law of natural justice correctly. 
On the morrow the industrious fisherman and the slug- 
gard return to the river's bank, and again the fisherman 
fishes all day while the sluggard sleeps, and at night 
the fisherman comes to market with his basket of fish, 
sells them, and receives therefor another dollar in cash. 
This is repeated from day to day, until the fisherman 
has saved up one hundred dollars. These one hundred 
dollars, according to the law of natural justice, are as 
much his individual property as were the baskets of 
fish. The baskets of fish were the reward of his labor, 
and the money received as their equivalent was also the 
reward of his labor. It was merely an exchange of 
fish for monev. The fisherman, anxious to secure for 
himself and family a home, exchanges the money for a 
city lot, when, lo, the sluggard, who had slept and re- 
freshed himself in the shade during all these many days, 
comes along, and says, " This lot is ours." " Oh, no," 
says the fisherman, "this lot is mine. While you slept 
I fished. The fish which I caught I carried to market, 
sold them, and received their equivalent in money, and 
with it purchased this lot, therefore it is mine." " The 
fish belonged to you," says the sluggard, " because you 
caught them. The money which you received for them 
was yours also, because it was the reward of your labor, 
but this lot is land, and Dr. McGlynn says that all the 



22 TENURE AND TOIL. 

men in the universe cannot make one grain of sand ; 
that God alone can make it, and as God made the land, 
it belongs to God. So nature has given the perpetual 
right to use it to all the children of men, and not to 
one individual more than another. It is true that I 
slept in the shade and was refreshed while you fished 
and toiled, but, as I am one of the children of men, I 
have as much right to this land as you have." " I have 
always heard," says the fisherman, " and, if I am not 
mistaken, it is so stated in Holy Writ, that the same 
God who made the land made the fishes too, and if the 
fact that I cannot make one grain of sand is to weigh 
in the balance, and is to be considered as a controlling 
reason against my right to own this land, suppose you 
go and tell the learned doctor to try his hand on a little 
fish." 



CHAPTER III. 

McGLYNN AND THE ANGEL. 

Passing from the fisherman to the sculptor, who has 
the vision so refined as to see a sleeping beauty in the 
rude block of stone taken from the quarry, and who 
has the artistic skill, with mallet and chisel, to release 
the angel that he sees imprisoned there, which angel 
" is his to give away, to keep, to sell, and even to de- 
stroy," because he has made it, we find here another 
illustration of the inconsistency and absurdity of the 



M' GLYNN AND THE ANGEL. 23 

• 
learned doctor's conception of the law of natural jus- 
tice. According to the abstract principles of natural 
justice the sculptor has no right to destroy the thing 
of beauty which he produced from the rude rock, be- 
cause the sculptor could not exist separate and apart 
from society, and as he is indebted to society for all 
that he is and all that he has and all that he enjoys, it 
would be a crime against the law of natural justice to 
permit him to destroy, to annihilate that which he thus 
produced. 

The product of the artisan's handiwork is not wholly 
his own. His ability to transform the unhewn marble 
into an image of grace and beauty is a resultant of the 
thoughtful toil and aspiring effort of every hand that 
has striven with chisel and mallet since the days of 
Bezaleel, the son of Hur. In very truth, the civiliza- 
tion of to-day is the crystallization of the human 
thought and human effort of all the ages gone before. 
But I do not propose to discuss this question, as it is, 
at best, a mere side issue, and hardly germane to the 
point in controversy, so that whether I admit or deny 
the claim that the sculptor has a right to destroy the 
angel, I agree with Dr. McGlynn that the angel is his 
to give away, to keep, or to sell. If he has the right 
to sell it, the money or thing which he receives as its 
equivalent is the reward or tribute paid to his genius, 
skill, and labor. Some angels sell at a very costly 
price. We mean the marble images such as the sculp- 
tor formed from the rude rock. But suppose another 
man, equally a genius in his way, but not endowed with 
the artistic vision and skill to see and free an angel im- 



24 TENURE AND TOIL. 

prisoned in the rock, shoulders his pick and shovel, and 
wends his way to the Rocky Mountains, and his artistic 
vision reveals to him in the outcroppings of the soil the 
existence of gold and silver far down amid the strata 
of the earth. With pick and shovel he makes haste 
to dig and throw the earth away, that he may secure 
precious metals hidden there. This gold and silver are 
his to give away, to keep, or to sell, just as much as 
was the sculptor's angel, formed out of the rude rock 
by the mallet and chisel guided by his genius. The 
gold and silver thus acquired are the rewards of his labor 
just as much so as the angel was the reward of the 
sculptor's labor. The gold and silver that he thus ap- 
propriated from the storehouse of nature by his per- 
severance and his toil are his as much as were the fish 
which the fisherman caught from the stream with his 
hook and line. The fish in the river equally belonged 
to the sluggard and the fisherman before they were 
caught. Both had the same natural right to fish from 
the stream, which was common property. This much 
the doctor admits ; not only admits but asserts it to be 
the law of natural justice, and it is because the fisher- 
man appropriated the fish from the storehouse of nature 
by his toil that they belonged to him in his individual 
right. It is the same way with the " imprisoned angel/' 
Any other man who has the genius and skill and in- 
dustry may go to the quarry and appropriate to him- 
self a rock out of which to make something useful or 
ornamental, just the same as did the sculptor, and 
what he thus appropriates from the " quarries of the 
gods" belongs to him because it is the reward of his 



M GLYNN AND THE ANGEL. 25 

labor. Any one who has the energy and inclination 
may shoulder his pick and shovel and wend his way to 
the Rocky Mountains, and delve and dig until he finds 
the hidden treasure, and when found, he simply appro- 
priates so much from the storehouse of nature, the 
thing which he thus appropriates is but the reward of 
his labor. To say that everybody who pursues this 
vocation cannot find a mine is no argument against the 
abstract principle upon which the law of natural jus- 
tice is based. Two men may fish all day, the one pa- 
tiently and perseveringly as the other, and one of them 
may catch fish in abundance, while the other may catch 
but few or none at all. And so it is in regard to the 
sculptor, for the thing of beauty which his genius and 
fancy formed may have a priceless value, while a simi- 
lar rock may be used by the stone-mason in the con- 
struction of a stable. Thus it is that we cannot equal- 
ize the value of men's services, nor is there any place 
in the law of natural justice for the argument that the 
sculptor should receive no higher reward for his labor 
than the stone-mason, nor that the successful miner 
should be limited in his reward to the value of the 
basket of fish. 

After the sculptor had disposed of the " angel," he 
concluded to go West to settle upon the prairie and 
grow up with the country. He travelled far out on the 
plains until- he came to a place upon which he decided 
to locate. There he pitched his tent and fenced in 
one hundred and sixty acres of land. After years of 
tireless patience and unremitting toil he transforms the 
land which he found a wilderness into a garden of 



26 TENURE AND TOIL. 

beauty and fruitfulness. Other settlers had located 
near him. At the close of one bright day six seedy 
tramps, ordained apostles of Dr. McGlynn's new civili- 
zation, came along, and without beck or bidding entered 
the cottage of the whilom sculptor. They remained 
uninvited guests for the night, and on the morrow, as 
they stood, with an " at-home" free and easy air, in 
front of the house, looking over the nicely-cultivated 
grounds, said to the settler, "Our farm looks fine." 
" Our farm !" exclaimed the settler. " This is my farm." 
"Why yours more than ours?" rejoined the tramps. 
" Is not this land, and God made the land ? And Henry 
George has said, and Dr. McGlynn, the Peter of the 
New Crusade, has echoed his saying, that all things 
made by God are not of right the property of one man, 
but belong to all men in common." " Yes, it may be 
allowed that land in a state of nature belongs to God, 
but I have appropriated out of nature's wide domain 
one hundred and sixty acres, which I have entered 
under the homestead law, fenced and cultivated, and 
the fruits which it yields are the reward of my labor. 
No one will deny that it rightfully belongs to me. God 
ordains it, and the law decrees it. All philosophy 
teaches it. Adam Smith and all the lesser lights who 
have written upon politico-economic questions affirm 
it. Even Henry George — when George is himself — 
admits it, for he says, ' The man who cultivates the 
soil for himself receives his wages in its produce, just 
as, if he uses his own capital and owns his own land, he 
may also receive interest and rent; the hunter's wages 
are the game he kills ; the fisherman's wages are the 



M' GLYNN AND THE ANGEL. 27 

fish he takes. The gold washed out by the self- 
employing gold-digger is as much, his wages as the 
money paid to the hired coal-miner by the purchaser 
of his labor. In short, whatever is received as the re- 
sult or reward of exertion is " wages." ' (" Progress and 
Poverty," ch. ii.) Just beyond you will find broad acres 
lying in a state of nature, the same as I found the land 
which I fenced and reclaimed. This you may enter as 
I have done, reclaim and cultivate it." The new- 
comers shrugged their shoulders at the very mention of 
work; having tramped to the frontiers to escape sawing 
wood, shovelling snow, or carrying coal up-stairs for a 
breakfast, the idea of toil, so out of harmony with the 
teachings of the new dispensation, chilled them to the 
marrow. The spokesman replied, "This land you 
point out to us is worth nothing. We do not want 
the untilled plains, we want the cultivated farm. 
This farm, you understand, has a rental value, and it is 
the rent we are after, not the farm. We do not ask 
you to divide the land with us. We have no use for 
land. You may remain on the farm and cultivate it so 
long as you pay for that privilege. We would not 
deprive you of that pleasure for the world. We pro- 
pose, however, to put it up at auction every year to 
the highest bidder, and if you do not bid more for it 
than any other person who wishes to cultivate it, you 
will have to surrender its possession and give up its 
enjoyment. Its full rental value, under the new order 
of things, must be paid into the public treasury, of 
which we y the people, are the trusty guardians. It is 
true that you display great learning and research and 



28 TENURE AND TOIL. 

study in quoting from Moses and the prophets, from 
Adam Smith, Henry George, and others, but the world 
has made great strides in advance of these fogies. 
Even Henry George has advanced since he wrote his 
work on ( Progress and Poverty.' He has recently 
enlisted in the ranks, and is marching arm in arm with 
our clerical Turveydrop, under the banner of the 
( Cross of the New Crusade.' This movement that we 
would dignify by so honorable a name, in some sense, 
may be called a very new one, since it is a new and 
a very determined effort to achieve a perfectly clear 
and decided end, and yet, in another sense, it may be 
called a very old one, since it is to preach and to make 
more common the practice among men of a truth that 
is as old as man himself, and in some sense may be 
said to be as old as God, — the truth that justice must 
be the rule of any society that shall be created by God. 
Our remedy, then, for the injustice that now exists is 
not to dispossess you or drive you out of this farm, 
but simply to appropriate to the common treasury its 
full rental value through existing forms of taxation, and 
thus we shall maintain the absolute equality of man in 
the general bounties of nature, without disturbing you 
in your possession. Indeed, the chief attraction to 
many of us in this crusade is the religion that is in it. 
It is founded on the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord's 
Prayer, the Brotherhood of Man, and the Fatherhood 
of God, which is the soul of all religion. We shall 
establish and maintain public victualling-houses and 
inns, so that when we invoke the bountiful Giver of all 
good things, ' Give us this day our daily bread/ it shall 



DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE EIGHT OF PROPERTY. 29 

be given us in fact and in deed. No more shall we be 
required to saw wood or shovel snow for a breakfast, 
nor scrub the steps of a bar-room for a drink of poor 
whiskey, but when the ' bloated but princely tramp' 
comes along, if you would have him to work for you, 
it must be at his own price and on his own terms." 

Perhaps the writer should crave the intelligent 
reader's pardon for the apparently trivial diversions of 
the foregoing pages. Yet I have not been seeking to 
traverse the imaginary vagaries of a mythical theorist, 
but in truth to pleasantly dissect the worse than soph- 
isms of the greatest political Don Quixote of the age. 
For the " New Crusade'' is vauntingly proclaimed to 
be the last evangel that supersedes all others, — a pana- 
cea for all ills, social and economic, that afflict the body 
politic. But a truce to such pleasantry. Let us proceed 
to a common-sense investigation of the rights of prop- 
erty, and gather a few sheaves of practical justice from 
the harvests of ages. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE EIGHT OF PROPERTY. 

" The inspired sweet singer of Israel tells us," says 
Dr. McGlynn, " ' The heaven of heavens is the Lord's, 
but the earth he hath given to the children of men ;' 
and again, Moses said, ' The land shall not be sold for- 

3* 



30 TENURE AND TOIL. 

ever, saith the Lord, for it is mine.' The Scripture 
teaches Charles the First and the rest of them that they 
shall not give it awav or sell it, because it does not be- 
long to them ; it belongs to God." From these quota- 
tions he undertakes to assert that any one born into the 
world is entitled by divine right to the equal enjoyment 
of landed property whether he works or sleeps, and 
that, according to the Scriptures, no one has a right to 
sell or dispose of land. 

Mr. T. E. Cliffe Leslie, in his introduction to Emile de 
Laveleye's " Primitive Property," says, " The property 
of which M. de Laveleye treats in this volume is prop- 
erty in land ; of all kinds of property that which has 
most deeply affected both the economic condition and the 
political career of human societies. In one sense, indeed, 
land was not primitive property ; it was not man's 
earliest possession or wealth. The first forms of prop- 
erty are lost in the mist that surrounds the first infant 
steps of the human race. Wild herbs, fruit, berries, 
and roots were probably the earliest acquisitions, but 
the food thus obtained was doubtless devoured at once. 
When at length providence was developed so far as to 
lead to the laying by of some sustenance for the future, 
the inference to which the earliest developments of 
movable wealth, of which we get glimpses, unmistaka- 
bly point, is that the store which individuals might thus 
accumulate would not have been regarded as their own 
absolute property, but as part of the common fund of 
the community, larger or smaller according to circum- 
stances, of which they were members ;" and he under- 
takes to prove that movable property in primitive so- 



DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE RIGHT OF PROPERTY. -%\ 

ciety belonged first to individuals. But a close analysis 
of his introduction will suffice to show that Mr. Leslie 
confuses terms, and cites, in support of his proposition, 
certain usages which prevailed alike among civilized 
and uncivilized races. It is not the purpose of this 
inquiry to enter into a very elaborate discussion in re- 
gard to these matters further than to prove that, accord- 
ing to the Scriptures, the learned doctor's deduction is 
not warranted, and that Mr. Leslie's assertion, to the 
effect that " the inference to which the earliest develop- 
ments of movable wealth, of which we get glimpses, 
unmistakably point, is that the store which individuals 
might thus accumulate would not have been regarded 
-as their own absolute property, but as part of the com- 
mon fund of the community, larger or smaller accord- 
ing to circumstances, of which they were members," is 
not supported by the history and development of so- 
ciety whether examined in the light of sacred history, 
profane writers, or the testimony of men, who have 
devoted much time to researches into the origin of 
property, and who have given great thought and study 
to the subject. 

In the third chapter of Genesis we read that when 
Adam disobeyed the injunction of God, the Lord God 
said to him, "Because thou hast eaten of the tree 
of which I commanded thee not to eat, cursed is the 
earth in thy work : with toil shalt thou eat of it all 
the days of thy life. Thorns and thistles shall it bring 
forth to thee, and thou shalt eat the herbs of the earth. 
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou 
return to the earth, out of which thou wast taken. And 



32 TENURE AND TOIL. 

the Lord God sent him out of the paradise of pleasure 
to till the earth from which he was taken." 

And again, after God had scourged the earth by the 
deluge, in making a new covenant with Noe, God 
blessed Noe and his sons, and said to them, " Increase 
and multiply, and fill the earth. . . . And everything 
which moveth and liveth shall be food for you : even 
as the green herbs have I delivered to you all things." 

Again, when Abram and Lot went out of Egypt rich 
in cattle, gold, and silver, so that the land was not able 
to bear them that they might dwell together, a strife 
arose between the herdsmen of Abram and Lot, and 
Abram said to Lot, " Let there be no quarrel, I beseech 
thee, between me and thee, and between my herdsmen 
and thy herdsmen ; for we are brethren. Behold, the 
whole land is before thee : depart from me, I pray thee; 
if thou wilt go to the left hand, I will take to the right : 
if thou choose the right hand, I will pass to the left. 
And Lot, lifting up his eyes, saw all the country about 
the Jordan, which was watered throughout, before the 
Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, as the paradise 
of the Lord. And Lot chose for himself the country 
about the Jordan, and he departed from the east : and 
they were separated, one from the other." 

Therefore it is evident that the cattle, gold, and silver 
which Abram and Lot possessed belonged to each of 
them individually. If the cattle were common prop- 
erty, why was it necessary to have separate herdsmen ? 

And after Lot was separated from him, the Lord 
said to Abram, " Lift up thy eyes and look from the 
place where thou now art, to the north and to the south, 



DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE RIGHT OF PROPERTY. 33 

to the east and to the west. All the land which thou 
seest I will give to thee, and to thy seed forever. And 
I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth : if any 
man can number the dust of the earth, he shall be able 
to number thy seed also. Arise and walk through the 
land in its length and breadth : for to thee I will give 
it." 

As God gave the land absolutely and forever to 
Abram and his seed, should " Charles the First and 
the rest of them" show title through Abram or his 
seed, their titles, from a scriptural stand-point, are 
indefeasible. 

Again, in chapter twenty-third we read that after the 
death of Sarah in the city of Arba, in the land of 
Canaan, Abraham came to mourn and to weep for her, 
and after he rose up from the funeral obsequies he spake 
to the children of Heth, saying, " A stranger and so- 
journer am I among you : give me the right of a 
burying-place with you, that I may bury my dead." 
And he requested the children of Heth to intercede for 
him with Ephron, the son of Zohar, to give him the 
double cave which he had in the end of his field for 
such money as it was worth for a possession as a bury- 
ing-place. This field was valued by Ephron at four 
hundred shekels. And when Abraham had heard this, 
he weighed out the money which Ephron had asked in 
the hearing of the children of Heth, — four hundred 
shekels of silver of common current money. And the 
field of Ephron, which was the double cave, looking 
towards Mamre, both it and the cave, and all the 
trees in all its limits round about, were made sure to 



34 TENURE AND TOIL. 

Abraham for a possession in the presence of the children 
of Heth and of all who went in at the gate of his city. 
And so Abraham buried Sarah, his wife, in the double 
cave of the field, which looketh towards- Mature; this 
is Hebron in the land of Canaan. And the field was 
made sure to Abraham, and the cave which was in it, 
for a possession to bury in by the children of Heth . This 
probably is the first authentic account we have of the 
sale and purchase of land or real property for money. 
In the twenty-second chapter of Exodus, in verse 
five, God himself, in delivering to Moses the laws by 
which the Israelites were to be governed, says that " if 
any man commit a trespass on a field or a vineyard by 
putting in his beast to feed upon other men's lands" 
(other men's lands, mark you), " he shall restore the 
best of whatever he hath in his own field or in his 
vineyard, according to the estimation of the damages." 
The book of Numbers abounds with references to 
private ownership in land and of the right of inheri- 
tance. In the thirty-second chapter of that book it is 
said that the sons of Reuben and Gad, who had many 
flocks of cattle, when they saw lands of Gazer and 
Gilead fit for feeding cattle they came to Moses and 
Eleazar, the priest and the princes of the multitude, 
and among other things said to them, " The land which 
the Lord smote in the sight of the children of Israel 
is rich in pasture, and we, thy servants, have very much 
cattle : if we have found favor in thy sight, give it to 
us, thy servants, in possession, and make us not pass 
over the Jordan." And in chapter thirty-third, verses 
fifty to fifty-six, it is written, — 



DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE RIGHT OF PROPERTY. 35 

" The Lord said to Moses : Command the children of 
Israel, and say to them : When ye shall have passed 
over the Jordan, entering into the land of Canaan, 
destroy all the inhabitants of that land, beat down their 
pillars, and break in pieces their statues, and waste all 
their high places, cleansing the land and dwelling in 
it. For I have given it you for an inheritance, and 
ye shall divide it among you by lot. . To the more 
numerous ye shall give a larger portion, and to the 
fewer less. To every one as the lot shall fall the in- 
heritance shall be given. The possession shall be 
divided by the tribes and families." 

In chapter thirty-fourth, after defining the limits of 
the land of Canaan which he gave to the Israelites, 
he named and selected men, Eleazar, the priest, and 
Josu, the son of Nun, and one prince of every tribe, to 
divide the land. And in chapter thirty-five God 
speaks to Moses, saying, " Command the children of 
Israel that they give to theLevites out of their possessions 
cities to dwell in and their suburbs round about: that 
they may abide in the towns, and the suburbs may be 
for their cattle and beasts. . . . And of these cities 
which shall be given out of the possessions of the 
children of Israel, from those who have many, many 
will be taken ; and from those who have less, fewer. 
Each shall give towns to the Levites according to the 
extent of their inheritance." And in order that the 
inheritance might not be alienated from one tribe to 
another, it is provided in chapter thirty-six that all are 
to marry within their own tribes. 

"And this is the law promulgated by the Lord 



36 TENURE AND TOIL. 

touching the daughters of Salphaad : Let them marry 
to whom they will, only so that it be to men of their 
own tribe : lest the possession of the children of Israel 
be mingled from tribe to tribe. For all men shall 
marry wives of their own tribe and kindred : and all 
women shall take husbands of the same tribe : that the 
inheritance may remain in the families, and that the 
tribes be not mingled one with another, but remain so 
as they were separated by the Lord." . . . 



CHAPTER Y. 



mcglynn's mistake. 



These chapters explain the meaning of the text 
quoted by Dr. McGlynn from the twenty-fifth chap- 
ter of Leviticus, twenty-third verse. Dr. McGlynn's 
quotation is hardly correct. Dr. McGlynn's version is 
as follows : " The land shall not be sold forever, saith 
the Lord, for it is mine." The text in King James's 
version of the Bible is, " The land shall not be sold 
forever : for the land is mine ; for ye are strangers and 
sojourners with me." And in Kenrick's* translation 
of the Bible it reads : " The land also shall not be sold 

* Dr. Kenrick's translation of the Bible is recognized among 
biblical scholars of every denomination as being a more literal 
rendering of the original text than any other, and as there is no 
material variance between it and King James's version, the author 
has preferred to quote from the former. 



M c GLYNN'S MISTAKE. 37 

forever : because it is mine, and ye are strangers and 
sojourners with me." Now, it will be seen that when 
Moses made use of this expression he was laying down 
the law relative to the feast of the seventh and of the 
fiftieth year of jubilee, and it was said also while the 
children of Israel were still wanderers and sojourners 
in the desert. " The Lord spake to Moses on Mount 
Sinai, saying : Speak to the children of Israel, and say 
to them : When ye shall have entered into the land 
which I give you, keep a sabbath to the Lord. Six 
years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt 
prune thy vineyard, and gather the fruits thereof: But 
in the seventh year shall be a sabbath to the land, of 
the resting of the Lord." (According to Kenrick 
the land was to rest from cultivation for a year.) 
" Thou shalt not sow thy field nor prune thy vine- 
yard. . . . And thou shalt sanctify the fiftieth year, 
and shalt proclaim release to all the inhabitants of thy 
land : for it is the year of jubilee. Every man shall 
return to his possessions, and every one shall go back 
to his former family : Because it is the jubilee and the 
fiftieth year." (The servants in this year were set 
free; landed property returned to its original pos- 
sessors to be again allotted to the members of the 
tribe, so that in this manner its permanent accumula- 
tion in the hands of others not of the tribe was pre- 
vented.) The portion, which fell to the lot of the 
individual belonged to him to use, enjoy, sell, or give 
away until the return of the jubilee year. Every sale 
of land, therefore, was limited to the year of jubilee, 
and the price varied according to the time which it was 



38 TENURE AND TOIL. 

to run from the time of its sale to the year of jubilee, 
and when the Lord says, through Moses, " The land 
also shall not be sold forever : because it is mine, and 
ye are strangers and sojourners with me/' he meant 
that the land should not be sold forever, and did not 
mean that they should never sell it ; but rather that it 
might be sold for any term of years not to exceed fifty 
years. In this chapter, as already stated, he is laying 
down a law to the Israelites for the observance of the 
feasts of the jubilee years. lx\ order that the meaning 
of this quotation may be properly understood and to 
make it harmonize with the text in which it occurs, it 
will be necessary to consider the verses preceding and 
those following it. They are as follows : 

" And in the eighth year ye shall sow, and shall eat 
of the old fruits, until the ninth year : till new grow 
up, ye shall eat the old store. The land also shall not 
be sold forever : because it is mine, and ye are stran- 
gers and sojourners with me. For which cause all the 
country of your possession shall be under the condition 
of redemption. If thy brother, being impoverished, sell 
his possession, and his kinsman will, he may redeem 
what he had sold. But if he have no kinsman, and 
he himself can find the price to redeem it, the value of 
the fruits shall be counted from the time when he sold 
it: and the overplus he shall restore to the buyer, and 
so shall receive his possession again. But if his hands 
find not the means to repay the price, the buyer shall 
have what he bought, until the year of the jubilee. 
For in this year all that is sold shall return to the 
owner, and to the ancient possessor. 7 ' 



M C GLFNN'S MISTAKE. 39 

Divine justice seemed to look with peculiar favor 
upon the tenure by which the title to city property was 
held, for in this same chapter out of which Dr. Mc- 
Glynn quotes, and from which he proclaims his com- 
munistic doctrine, particularly against the owners of 
city property, we find it stated as follows : 

" He that selleth a house within the walls of a city, 
shall have the liberty to redeem it, until one year be 
expired. If he redeem it not, and the whole year be 
fully out, the buyer shall possess it, and his posterity 
forever; and it cannot be redeemed, not even in the 
jubilee." 

Kenrick, in a note to this verse, says that the incon- 
veniences likely to arise from temporary and condi- 
tional transfers of property in cities caused the right 
of redemption to be limited to one year, and in order 
that the Levites, who were dependent upon the chil- 
dren of Israel for their possessions, might not be de- 
prived of their property from inability to redeem the 
same, the law made a special favor, to the effect that the 
houses of Levites which are in cities may always be 
redeemed. If they be not redeemed in the jubilee they 
shall all return to the owners ; because the houses of 
the cities of the Levites are for their possessions among 
the childern of Israel. By considering these verses in 
connection with the book of Numbers, it will be seen 
that the object of the law was to prevent a sale of 
property belonging to the individual for a period ex- 
ceeding fifty years, as in that year all the lands were 
to return to the original owner, to be again allotted to 
the members of the tribes. 



40 TENURE AND TOIL. 

We also find it written in the book of Ruth that in 
the days when the judges ruled Israel, a certain man 
named Elimelech, of Bethlehem, Judea, went to so- 
journ in the land of Moab with his wife and two sons. 
The sons of Elimelech married wives of the tribe of 
Moabites, and after the death of Elimelech and of his 
sons, the widow of Elimelech, named Naomi, returned 
to her people, the Israelites, accompanied by her daugh- 
ter-in-law, Ruth. Elimelech had a kinsman named 
Boaz, who was rich and powerful, in whose eyes the 
Moabitess, Ruth, found favor, and Boaz went to the 
gate of the city, where all solemn and legal acts were 
performed, and sat there awaiting the coming of the 
nearest kinsman of Elimelech, and when he saw him 
he requested him to sit down, in order that they might 
talk over matters concerning Ruth. And Boaz called 
as witnesses ten of the ancients of the city, according 
to the manner of the Israelites, and he spoke to the 
kinsman of Elimelech, saying, " Naomi, who is re- 
turned from the country of Moab, will sell a parcel 
of land that belonged to our brother Elimelech. I 
would have thee to understand this, and would tell 
thee before all that sit here, and before the ancients 
of my people, if thou wilt take possession of it by the 
right of kindred, buy it and possess it : but if it please 
thee not, tell me so, that I may know what I have to 
do : for there is no near kinsman besides thee, who art 
first, and me, who am second. And he answered : I 
will buy the field. And Boaz said to him : When thou 
buyest the field at the woman's hand, thou must take 
also Ruth, the Moabitess, who was the wife of the de- 



M° GLYNN'S MISTAKE. 41 

ceased : to raise up the name of thy kinsman in his 
inheritance." 

His relative having yielded his right of next of 
kin, Boaz, taking unto himself Ruth, the gleaner, said 
to the ancients and to all the people, " Ye are witnesses 
this day, that I have bought all that was Elimelech's, 
and Chelion's, and Mahalon's, of the hand of Naomi : 
And have taken to wife Ruth, the Moabitess, the wife 
of Mahalon, to raise up the name of the deceased in 
his inheritance, lest his name be cut off from among his 
family and his brethren and his people. Ye, I say, are 
witnesses of this thing. Then all the people that were in 
the gate and the ancients answered : We are witnesses." 

Before the common use of written instruments, trans- 
fers of property were publicly made in the presence of 
witnesses, and something as symbolical of the delivery 
of the property, such as a twig or a piece of turf, in 
this case a shoe, according to the custom of the Israel- 
ites, was given by the seller to the buyer in the presence 
of witnesses. 

And in the book of Genesis, chapter forty-seven, 
verses twenty to twenty- two, it is said, " So Joseph 
bought all the land of Egypt, every man selling his 
possessions, because of the greatness of the famine. 
And he brought it into Pharao's hands : And all its 
people, from one end of the borders of Egypt, even to 
the other end thereof, except the land of the priests, 
which had been given them by the king : to whom also 
a certain allowance of food was given out of the public 
stores, and therefore they were not forced to sell their 
possessions." 

4* 



42 TENURE AND TOIL. 

And iii the third book of Kings,* referring to Amri, 
it is said, " And he bought the hill of Samaria of Semer 
for two talents of silver, and he built upon it, and he 
called the city which he built Samaria, after the name 
of Semer, the owner of the hill." 

And in the New Testament we find in the fourth 
chapter of the Acts, verses thirty-four to thirty-seven, 
referring to those who had followed the disciples, the 
following: "For neither was any one among them 
needy ; for as many as were owners of lands or houses, 
sold them, and brought the prices of the things which 
they sold, and laid them down at the feet of the 
apostles : and distribution was made to every one ac- 
cording as he had need. And Joseph, who by the 
apostles was surnamed Barnabas (which is, by inter- 
pretation, the son of consolation), a Levite, a Cyprian 
born, having land, sold it, and brought the price, and 
laid it at the feet of the apostles." 

These quotations, taken from the Scriptures, and 
many others which might be found, bear indubitable 
evidence of the right of individual ownership in land 
from the beginning of the world down to the time of 
the apostles. 

* King James's version, I. Kings xvi., 24. 



PROPERTY RIGHTS RECOGNIZED IN ALL AGES. 43 



CHAPTER VI. 

PEOPEETY EIGHTS EECOGNIZED IN ALL AGES. 

Heeodottjs, called by Cicero the Father of History, 
in speaking of the cause of hostilities between the 
Phoenicians and the Greeks, says : " This nation [Phoe- 
nicians] migrated from the borders of the Red Sea to 
the place of their present settlement, and soon distin- 
guished themselves by their long and enterprising 
voyages. They exported to Argos, amongst other 
places, the produce of Egypt and Assyria. Argos, at 
that period, was the most famous of all those states 
which are now comprehended under the general appel- 
lation of Greece. On their arrival here, the Phoenicians 
exposed their merchandise to sale: after remaining 
about six days, and when they had almost disposed of 
their different articles of commerce, the king's daughter, 
whom both nations agree in calling Io, came, among a 
great number of other women, to visit them at their 
station. Whilst these females, standing near the stern 
of the vessel, amused themselves with bargaining for 
such things as attracted their curiosity, the Phoenicians, 
in conjunction, made an attempt to seize their persons. 
The greater part of them escaped ; but Io remained a 
captive with many others. They carried them on board, 
and directed their course for Egypt." 

Hence it is very reasonable to assume that at this 
early period the right of private ownership in property 



44 TENURE AND TOIL. 

was recognized both among the Greeks and Phoenicians. 
Homer constantly distinguishes the Phoenicians as a 
commercial and seafaring people. The writers of 
ancient poetry and ancient history serve alike to confirm 
the assertion that among the Greeks, Romans, Phoe- 
nicians, Persians, Carthaginians, and Egyptians the 
right of private ownership in property existed from 
the earliest period of which we have any definite 
data. In other words, wherever we find a commercial 
people, we find the right of individual ownership in 
property recognized. 

This is confirmed by reference to the laws of Lycurgus, 
for in his days, according to the most authentic history, 
the right of private ownership in property in Sparta 
existed, and, next to the institution of the senate and 
the assembly of the people, the new division of the 
lands instituted by him is by far the most worthy of 
note. 

According to the laws established with respect to the 
descent of property, the estate of a deceased father 
descended to his sons ; but if no legitimate son survived 
him, it descended to his daughters, who were compelled 
to marry their nearest relatives or forfeit their inheri- 
tance. Persons who had no lawful issue were allowed 
to adopt whom they pleased, whether their own natural 
sons, or, by consent of their parents, the sons of other 
men. But such as were incapable of making wills 
were deuied this privilege. Adopted children were 
invested with all the privileges and rights of, and 
obliged to perform all the duties belonging to, natural 
children ; and, being thus provided for in another 



PROPERTY RIGHTS RECOGNIZED IN ALL AGES. 45 

family, they ceased to have any claim of inheritance or 
kindred in the family which they left, unless they first 
renounced their adoption. This could be done only in 
cases where children were born to them who would 
bear the name of the person by whom they were 
adopted and was intended to prevent the extinguish- 
ment of the family name of those who adopted them 
for the purpose of preserving it. If the adopted 
person died without lawful issue, the inheritance de- 
scended to the relatives of the person who adopted 
him. Illegitimate children were allowed some share 
both among the Jews and the Grecians in their father's 
estate. It was an ancient custom in Greece for legiti- 
mate sons to divide their fathers' estates by lots, each 
taking an equal share without regard to priority of 
birth, but allowing a small pittance to such as were 
unlawfully begotten, — the portion allotted being regu- 
lated by ancient custom or by law. The Athenian 
law-giver allowed five hundred drachmas, which was 
afterwards raised to one thousand. Such as had neither 
legitimate nor adopted children were succeeded by the 
next of kin. 

The Grecian practice concerning wills was not the 
same in all places; some states permitted men to dis- 
pose of their estates ; others wholly deprived them of 
that privilege. We are told by Plutarch that Solon is 
much commended for his law concerning wills; for 
before his time no man was allowed to make one, and 
all the wealth of deceased persons belonged to their 
families; but Solon permitted them to bestow it on 
whom they pleased, esteeming friendship a stronger tie 



46 TENURE AND TOIL. 

than kindred, and affection than necessity, and thus put 
every man's estate at his own disposal, yet he allowed 
not all sorts of wills, but required the following con- 
ditions in all persons that made them : 

1. That they must be citizens of Athens, not slaves 
or foreigners ; for then their estates were confiscated for 
the public use. 

2. That they must be men who have arrived at 
twenty years of age ; for women, and men under that 
age, were not permitted to dispose by will of more than 
one medimnus of barley. 

3. That they must not be adopted ; for when adopted 
persons died without issue, the estates they received by 
adoption returned to the relations of the man who 
adopted them. 

4. That they should have no male children of their 
own, for then their estates belonged to them. If they 
had only daughters, the persons to whom the inheri- 
tance was bequeathed were obliged to marry them. Yet 
men were allowed to appoint heirs to succeed their chil- 
dren, in case these happened to die under twenty years 
of age. 

5. That they should be in their right minds, because 
testaments extorted through the frenzy of a disease, or 
dotage of old age, were not in reality the wills of the 
persons that made them. 

6. That they should not be under imprisonment or 
other constraint, their consent being then only forced, 
nor in justice to be reputed voluntary. 

7. That they should not be induced to it by the 
charms and insinuations of a wife ; for (says Plutarch) 



THE HEROIC AGE OF GREEOE. 47 

the wise law-giver, with good reason, thought that no 
difference was to be put between deceit and necessity, 
flattery and compulsion, since both are equally power- 
ful to persuade a mau from reason. 

Wills were usually signed and sealed in the presence 
of several witnesses, and were then placed in the hands 
of trustees, who were obliged to see them performed. 
At Athens some of the magistrates, particularly the 
astynomi (public magistrates) were often present at the 
making of wills. Sometimes the archons (the chief 
magistrates) were also present; hence we are told by 
Harpocration and Suidas, that when anything was given 
in the presence of the archons, it was termed dosis 
(gift) ; for this word though commonly taken for any 
sort of gift or present, yet was by the Athenian orators 
peculiarly applied to legacies and things disposed of by 
will. Sometimes the testator declared his will before 
sufficient witnesses without Committing it to writing. 
Thus Callias, fearing to be cut off by a wicked con- 
spiracy, is said to have made an open declaration of his 
will before the popular assembly at Athens. The same 
was done in the nuncupative wills at Rome. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE HEROIC AGE OF GREECE. 

Let us return for the moment to the heroic age in 
Grecian history, and we find the people divided into 
three distinct classes. The nobles, who were much ex- 



48 TENURE AND TOIL. 

alted above the rest of the community in honor, wealth, 
and power, and being the sole possessors of slaves during 
this era, were distinguished by their prowess, their large 
estates, and numerous slaves. But slavery was less 
prevalent during this period than in republican Greece. 

The common freemen, who possessed portions of land 
as their own property and a class of poor freemen called 
Thetes, who, though not the possessors of land, were 
still free and worked for hire on the estates of the 
others. Among the freemen we find a certain class of 
professional persons whose acquirements, attainments, 
and knowledge raised them above those of their class 
and procured for them the respect of the nobles, such 
as the seer, the bard, and also the smith and the car- 
penter, since the knowledge of the mechanical arts in 
that age was confined to but a few. Still it was not 
considered derogatory to the dignity of the nobles, or 
even the kings, to be skilled in the manual arts, for 
Ulysses is represented as building his own bedchamber 
and constructing his own raft, and he boasts of being 
an excellent mower and ploughman. 

Agriculture was extensively practised, vineyards care- 
fully cultivated, and property in land was transmitted 
from father to son. 

The third class was that of the slaves, who were 
vastly more numerous in republican Greece than in 
former times. 

As-time passed by and republics rose and fell in 
Greece, and the poorer classes became deeply involved 
at the time of Solon, we find two classes, the rich and 
the poor. The latter ready to rise in open insurrection, 



THE HEROIC AGE OF GREECE. 49 

for many had been sold into slavery for debt, and their 
property as well as their persons taken as security for 
the principal and interest, Solon passed an ordinance 
which cancelled all contracts by which the land or per- 
son had been given as security for a debt; thus the 
land was relieved from all claims and incumbrances, 
and all persons were set at liberty who had been re- 
duced to slavery on account of their debts. He pro- 
vided for the return home of all persons who had been 
sold into foreign countries. He forbade all loans in 
which the person of the debtor was pledged as security ; 
thereby releasing the poorer classes from their diffi- 
culties. He relieved the debtors by lowering the 
standard of coinage so that they were saved rather 
more than one-fourth in every payment. The title of 
the citizens to the honors and offices of the state was 
henceforward regulated by their wealth and not by their 
birth. He divided the people into four classes accord- 
ing to their property, which he caused to be assessed. 
He instituted courts of judicature wherein the resur- 
rected rights of the private citizen might be vindicated, 
and consequently many forms of actions suitable to the 
enforcement of these rights respectively grew into prac- 
tice. These different forms of action, though rude at 
first, acquired a high degree of perfection under the 
system of adjudication inaugurated by Solon, and they 
became the established means whereby the various 
wrongs were righted, and it would seem from the well- 
established system that there was scarcely "a wrong 
without a remedy." 

Whenever daughters inherited the estates of their 
c d 5 



50 TENURE AND TOIL. 

parents they were obliged by law to marry their nearest 
relation, and by a form of action for an inheritance, 
persons of the same family, each member of whom 
claimed to be more nearly allied to the heiress than the 
rest, sought to establish his claim. Among these forms 
of actions, those used for the recovery of rent and pos- 
session, and that in the nature of our ejectment, were 
very prominent. There was one form of action where 
the plaintiff laid claim to the house for the rent; 
another form if he claimed an estate in the land. If 
the plaintiff cast his adversary in either of the former 
suits, he then entered a second action against him 
whereby he laid claim to the house or land as being a 
part of his estate. And after this, if the person in 
possession remained obstinate and would not deliver up 
the estate to the lawful owner, there was a third action 
commenced, in the form of an action for contempt of 
court, which was in effect to eject him from the prem- 
ises and place the lawful owner in possession who had 
been hindered from entering upon his estate. 



CHAPTER VIIL 

ROMAN POLITY. 

Giving no credence to the legends of JEneas's escape 
from the flames of Troy, bearing upon his shoulders 
his father, Anchises, the punishment of the vestal vir- 



ROMAN POLITY. 51 

gin who gave birth to Remus and Romulus, the mi- 
raculous preservation of these two boys, who were 
ordered to be consigned to the waters of the Tiber, the 
treachery of Romulus towards his twin-brother, and the 
founding of the city which was to become famous for 
all time, history attributes to Romulus the founding of 
all the early institutions of Rome, — social, political, and 
military. In the social state the population was di- 
vided into two classes, burgesses or citizens on the one 
hand, and on the other their clients or dependents. The 
burgesses were called patrons in relation to their clients. 
These patrons were required by law or custom to defend 
their clients from all wrong or oppression on the part 
of others, while the clients were bound to render cer- 
tain services to their patrons. So that the relation of 
patron and client in some degree resembled that of 
lord and vassal in the feudal times. The burgesses 
alone enjoyed all political rights, and they alone made 
up what was at this time the body politic of Rome. 
The citizens or burgesses of the political state were 
divided into three tribes, the Ramnenses, the Tatienses, 
and Luceres. The first had its name from Romulus, 
the second from the Sabine king, and the third from 
the lucus or grove where the asylum stood, and where 
the knights of this century had formerly dwelt. Each 
tribe was divided into ten curias or wards, and each 
curia had a chief officer or priest called its curio. The 
citizens or burgesses met according to their curiae in 
the comitium to vote in all matters of state which the 
king was bound to lay before them, and their assembly 
was called the Comitia Curiata or assembly of the 



52 TENURE AND TOIL. 

curias, and all matters were decided by the majority 
vote of the curiae. No law could be made without 
their consent. Nor was the sovereign power of the 
king considered legally established until it had been 
conferred by the curiae. By virtue of the sovereign 
power so conferred, the king held the chief command 
in war, and was supreme judge in matters of life and 
death, and in token thereof he was attended by twelve 
lictors, bearing bundles of rods, with sharp axes pro- 
jecting from the middle of them. Besides this as- 
sembly, Romulus nominated one hundred senators as 
an advisory council, who were styled Fathers from 
their honorable office, and their descendants Patricians. 
In every struggle for liberty, in all the revolutions 
brought about by the various changes of government 
from Romulus until the decline and fall of the Roman 
empire, the curiae exercised a controlling power in the 
political state. It gradually became the assembly of 
the people through which the commoners in their re- 
spective tribes elected the tribunes and consuls. 

That the nature of the tenure by which, property 
was held in Rome under the government of the kings 
bore a striking resemblance to that which existed under 
the feudal system will be seen from the institutions es- 
tablished by Servius 'fullius. He instituted the cen- 
sus, " an ordinance/ 7 says Livy, " of the most salutary 
consequence in an empire that was to rise to such a 
pitch of greatness, according to which the several ser- 
vices requisite in war and peace were to be discharged, 
not by every person indiscriminately, as formerly, but 
according to the proportion of their several properties. 



ROMAN POLITY. 53 

He then, according to the census, formed the plan of 
the classes and centuries, and the arrangement which 
subsists at present,* calculated to preserve regularity 
and propriety in all transactions either of peace or war." 
He divided the Roman citizens into six classes. The 
first class consisted of those who possessed at least a 
hundred thousand sera (the sera were Roman coins, one 
hundred thousand of which would be about equal t<> 
fifteen hundred and seventy dollars), and was composed 
of eighty centuries ; forty elder (the elder consisted of 
those who had attained to forty-six years of age) ; and 
the same number of younger (the younger from seven- 
teen to forty-six). The business of the elder was to 
guard the city, that of the younger to carry on war 
abroad. The second, third, fourth, and fifth classes 
were established according to their respective wealth. 
Then follows minute regulations in regard to the arms 
and equipments that they were required to provide, 
which show how nearly the feudal system was copied 
from these ordinances. The agrarian system was the 
cause of continual discontent among the plebeians, and 
of incessant dissensions and internal warfare between 
them and the landed aristocracy. 

And under the third consulship of Spurius Cassius, 
an agrarian law was first proposed looking to an ad- 
justment of the difficulties between the classes and the 
increase of the political independence of the plebeians. 
Liddell, in his " History of Rome," speaking of these 



* Livy was born fifty-eight years before, and died seventeen 
years after, the birtb of Christ. 

5* 



54 TENURE AND TOIL. 

laws, says that " great mistakes formerly prevailed in 
the nature of the Roman laws familiarly termed 
agrarian. It was supposed that by these laws all land 
was declared common property, and that at certain in- 
tervals of time the state assumed possession and made 
a fresh distribution thereof to all citizens, rich and poor. 
It is needless to make any remarks on the nature and 
consequences of such a law, sufficient it will be to say, 
what is now known to all, that at Rome such laws 
never existed, — never were thought of. The lands 
which were to be distributed by agrarian laws were 
not private property, but the property of the state. 
They were, originally, those public lands which had 
been the domain of the kings, and which were increased 
whenever any city or people was conquered by the 
Romans, because it was an Italian practice to confiscate 
the lands of the conquered, in whole or in part, to the 
use and benefit of the conquering people." At this 
time the patrician burgesses in effect constituted the 
populus, and they had occupied, the greater part, if not 
all, of this public land, which consisted of pasturage ; 
and it was manifest that if the plebeians could add to 
their small farms, which were mostly in tillage, the 
right of pasturage on the public lands, their means 
would be much increased, and they were likely to be- 
come much less dependent upon the wealthy patricians. 
Passing from this general to a more particular view 
of Roman history with respect to property, we find 
that the private rights of Roman citizens were first, the 
right of liberty; second, the right of family; third, 
the right of marriage; fourth, the right of a father; 



ROMAN PROPERTY RIGHTS. 55 

fifth, the right of property ; sixth, the right of making 
a will and succeeding to an inheritance ; and seventh, 
the right of tutelage or wardship. As the right of 
property is the subject of discussion, it is unnecessary 
to consider the other rights which pertain to the citizen 
in this connection. 



CHAPTER IX. 

ROMAN PROPERTY RIGHTS. 

Things, with respect to property, among the Romans 
were variously divided. Some things were said to be 
of divine right, others of human right ; the former 
were called sacred, as altars, temples, or anything pub- 
licly consecrated to the gods by the authority of the 
great pontiff. Things of human right were called 
profane, and were either public and common, as the 
air, running water, the sea and its shores, etc., or pri- 
vate, which might be the property of individuals. 
The things in which a whole society or corporation had 
the property, and each individual the use, were called 
the property of the people, as theatres, paths, highways, 
and the like. Property was also divided, as in the 
present time, into movable or immovable, corporeal or 
incorporeal, etc. Property was either res mancipi or 
nee mancipi. The locality of the property and not the 
property itself made the distinction. Res maneipi were 
things which were alienated by mancipatio. They in- 



56 TENURE AND TOIL. 

eluded lands, houses, slaves, domestic animals, etc., on 
Italian soil which might be sold and alienated, or the 
property of them transferred from one person to 
another. And it behooved the seller to be answerable 
for them to the purchaser to secure the possession. 
Nee mancipi res were those things not comprised in the 
foregoing class, or, more properly speaking, those things 
which were extra solum, — beyond the confines of Rome 
proper, and not governed by its law and custom. The 
modes of acquiring property were as follows: The sale 
and transfer of the property of the res mancipi was 
made by an imaginary sale, in which only Roman 
citizens could take part. It was effected in the presence 
of not less than five witnesses, who were Roman citizens 
of the age of puberty. The civil law fixed the age 
of puberty at fourteen years in males and twelve in 
females. At this sale there was also a person of the 
same condition to hold a pair of scales, the purchaser 
taking hold of the property or something taken from 
the property if it was not capable of manual delivery, 
and affirming it to be purchased by him with the scales 
and a piece of copper. He then struck the scales with 
the copper, delivering the copper to the seller by way 
of earnest money. Cicero commonly uses the word 
mancipium to imply the sale or transfer of property, 
conferring absolute and indefeasible title, and uses the 
word nexus to imply the deposit or transfer of property 
by way of pledge. Movable property was also sold or 
transferred by the parties coming before the praetor or 
president of the province, who adjudged it to the 
persons who claimed it, which generally occurred in 



ROMAN PROPERTY RIGHTS. 57 

the case of debtors, who, when insolvent, gave up their 
goods to their creditors. The word usucaptio or usu- 
capio was used to denote the property of a thing ob- 
tained by possessing it for a certain time without 
interruption : according to the law of the Twelve 
Tables, for two years, if it was a farm or immovable 
thing, and for one year if the thing was movable ; but 
afterwards possession for a longer time was necessary 
before the right of property accrued by prescription ; 
in some of the provinces ten, twenty, or in certain cases 
a number of years beyond remembrance. Before the 
adoption of the Twelve Tables, the Roman law did 
not recognize the right of private testamentary dispo- 
sition. The law prior to this period prescribed the rule 
of succession, which a private citizen was not permitted 
to alter. 

A citizen who was without issue could not constitute 
a stranger as his heir or successor without the sanction 
of the legislative assembly called the Comitia Calata. 
Anciently, wills were made in time of peace in the 
Comitia Curiata, which were convened biennially for 
the making of wills, but the testament of a soldier 
might be made in the presence and hearing of four of 
his fellow-soldiers as witnesses before engaging in bat- 
tle, and these wills were only valid while the expedi- 
tion lasted. As the Comitia for making wills con- 
vened only once in two years, persons in fear of immi- 
nent death mancipated their estates to some friend per 
ses et libram. (A formality of sale by which the seller, 
in token of the bargain being struck, put a weight into 
the balance, or more properly the purchaser struck the 



58 TENURE AND TOIL. 

scales with a piece of copper and then delivered the 
copper to the vendor by way of purchase money.) 
These two forms gradually fell into disuse after the 
adoption of the Twelve Tables, and thereafter the testa- 
tor alienated his estate to some friend, who was called 
familise emptor, whose duties were somewhat analogous 
to that of a trustee. The alienation or imaginary sale 
took place in the presence of five witnesses, a libripens 
and antestatus, and the sale having been duly made per 
ses et libram, the testator holding up the wax tablets 
in his hand upon which he had written his will, he 
stated orally his wishes and said, Usee uti in his tabulis 
cerisve seripta sunt ita do, ita lego, ita testor, itaque vos 
Quirites testimonium prcebitote. The antestatus then 
stepped forward and touched the ears of the witnesses, 
but neither their seals nor signatures were required. 

It is said that Servius Tullius was the author of the 
first agrarian regulations ; that he divided part of the 
domain land among the poorer plebeians at the rate of 
four-and-a-half acres to the man ; but whether these assign- 
ments of land had taken effect, and whether the proposal 
of Spurius Cassius was merely intended to carry them 
into execution, or was an additional law of the same 
character, we have no means of judging. Upon either 
supposition the relief of the plebeians would be of the 
same kind. The patrician burgesses did not oppose 
the enactment of the law because they thought that it 
would be more easy to thwart its execution than to 
prevent its adoption. As soon as Spurius Cassius laid 
down his consulship, the patricians, by intrigues and com- 
binations, rendered the law ineffectual, and, as a conse- 



ROMAN PROPERTY RIGHTS. 59 

quence, whenever Rome was not at war with neighboring 
nations, a state of civil commotion bordering upon in- 
surrection and rebellion existed among the classes, until 
at length, under the consulship of Spurius Tarpeius 
and Alus JEternius, about three hundred years after 
the foundation of Rome, an embassy was appointed 
and sent to Athens to procure a copy of the famous 
laws of Solon, and to make themselves acquainted with 
the laws, customs, and institutions of the other states of 
Greece. These ambassadors spent a year in Greece, and 
upon their return to Rome submitted a report embody- 
ing the result of their observations and investigations 
to the senate, which chose ten of its members to draw 
up a body of laws based upon the report of the em- 
bassy, and then communicate the work to the senate 
and people for their approbation and confirmation. 
The decemvirs, having devoted a whole year to this 
great work, presented, as a result of their labors, the Ten 
Tables in the open forum, which were afterwards ap- 
proved by an express decree of the senate and con- 
firmed by the unanimous voice of the Roman people, 
voting in an assembly of the centuries. These Ten 
Tables, which are simple maxims or fundamental princi- 
ples, constituted the basis or ground-work of the Roman 
civil law. The fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth tables 
deal with questions relating to property. They- are as 

follows : 

TABLE V. 

OF INHERITANCES AND GUARDIANSHIPS. 

I. After the death of a father of a family, let the disposition 
be made of his estate, and his appointment concerning the 
guardianship of his children be observed. 



60 TENURE AND TOIL. 

II. If he dies intestate, and has no children to succeed him, 
let his nearest relation be his heir ; if he has no near relation, 
let a man of his own name be his heir. 

III. When a freedman dies intestate, and without heirs, if 
his patron be alive, or has left children, let the effects of the 
freedman go to the family of his patron. 

IV. After the death of a debtor, his debts shall be paid by 
his heirs, in proportion to the share they have in his inheri- 
tance. After this they may divide the rest of his effects, if they 
please, and the Praetor shall appoint three arbitrators to make 
the division. 

V. If a father of a family dies intestate, and leaves an heir 
under age, let the child's nearest relation be his guardian. 

VI. If any one becomes mad, or prodigal, and has nobody 
to take care of him, let a relation, or, if he has none, a man of 
his own name, have the care of his person and estate. 

TABLE VI. 

OF PROPERTY AND POSSESSION. 

I. When a man conveys his estate to another, let the terms 
of the conveyance create the right. 

II. If a slave, who was made free on condition of paying a 
certain sum, be afterwards sold, let him be set at liberty, if he 
pay the person who, has bought him the sum agreed upon. 

III. Let not any piece of merchandise, though sold and de- 
livered, belong to the buyer till he has paid for it. 

IV. Let two years' possession amount to a prescription for 
lands, and one for movables. 

V. In litigated cases the presumption shall always be on 
the side of the possessor. And in disputes about liberty or 
slavery, the presumption shall always be on the side of liberty. 

TABLE VII. 

OF TRESPASSES AND DAMAGES. 

I. If a beast does any damage in a field, let the master of 
the beast make satisfaction, or give up his beast. 



ROMAN PROPERTY RIGHTS. Q\ 

II. If you find a rafter or a pole which belongs to you in 
another man's house or vineyard, and they are made use of, 
do not pull down the house, or ruin the vineyard, but make 
the possessor pay double the value of the thing stolen, and 
when the house is destroyed, or the pole taken out of the 
vineyard, then seize what is your own. 

III. "Whoever shall maliciously set fire to another man's 
house, or an heap of corn near his house, shall be imprisoned, 
scourged, and burnt to death. If he did it by accident, let 
him repair the damage. And if he be a poor man, let him be 
slightly corrected, etc. 

TABLE VIII. 

OF ESTATES IN THE COUNTRY. 

I. Let the space of two and a half feet of ground be always 
left between one house and another. 

II. Societies may make what by-laws they please among 
themselves, provided they do not interfere with the public 
laws. 

III. When two neighbors have any disputes about their 
grounds, the Praetor shall assign them three arbitrators. 

IV. When a tree planted in afield does injury to an adjoin- 
ing field by its shade, let its branches be cut off fifteen feet 
high. 

V. If the fruit of a tree falls into a neighboring field, the 
owner of the tree may go and pick it up. 

VI. If a man would make a drain to carry off the rain- 
water from his ground to his neighbor's, let the Prsetor appoint 
three arbitrators to judge of the damage the water may do, 
and prevent it. 

VII. Eoads shall be eight feet wide where they run straight, 
and where they turn, sixteen. 

VIII. If a road between two fields be bad, the traveller may 
drive through which field he pleases. 

It would be unprofitable in this connection to go over 
the different changes which took place in the .Roman 

6 



62 TENURE AND TOIL. 

civil law with regard to the right of property, the 
mode of its transfer, and testamentary disposition, from 
the adoption of the Twelve Tables to the collection and 
codification of the Roman civil law under the Emperor 
Justinian.* From tradition, from history, from legis- 
lation, it will be seen that the right of private property 
in Home was a right which grew out of immemorial 
usage, a right sanctioned by custom and held inviola- 
ble in law. 



CHAPTER X. 

A K£SUM£. 

Fkom the Scriptures, from profane history, and from 
the writings of men who have given special study to 
the evolution of the right of property, we learn that 
among all tribes and peoples, sufficiently civilized to 
cultivate the lands, that the right of individual owner- 
ship in property has been and is recognized, but in each 
case, so long as they maintained their tribal institutions, 
the right of the individual to dispose of the land al- 
lotted to him was restricted to transfers between the 
members of the same tribe. He could not alienate 
his possession and title, — that is to say, he could not dis- 
pose of it in such a way as to vest an absolute title in 

* The most ample provisions are found in the Institutes of 
Justinian, compiled about the year a.d. 533 by Tribouian and 
others for the protection and preservation of individual rights of 
property. 



A RESUME. 63 

a stranger not of his tribe. This restriction did not 
destroy the right of ownership in land nor the power 
of the individual to sell it for whatever price he could 
procure. The Mosaic law restricted the sale to a cer- 
tain number of years, that is, to the fiftieth or Jubi- 
lee year, when it returned to its original owner, and 
under the tribal system the sale was restricted to mem- 
bers of the tribe. The same in effect as if a law of 
Illinois provided that no citizen of the State shall be 
permitted to sell his land to an alien for a period to 
exceed fifty years, and that no alien shall own or in- 
herit lands or tenements in the State of Illinois except 
for a temporary purpose. Such a law would not be 
contrary to individual rights of property, but, on the 
other hand, would be deemed wise and beneficent, pre- 
venting the lands from being owned and controlled 
by aliens who have no interest in the welfare of the 
State or its people except to collect the rent and tithes 
from their tenants in possession. Even in newly-dis- 
covered countries where there is any evidence of civili- 
zation we find individual ownership of land either 
absolute, qualified, or restricted, but in those countries 
where there is no approach to civilization, where ani- 
mal instincts still dominate the mind, where rings 
dangle from the nose to ornament the face, where pig- 
ments and paste besmear the countenance, where fig- 
leaf aprons or no aprons at all are worn, the fields lie 
in a state of nature, unploughed, uncultivated, unfruit- 
ful. Here the lands are worthless for agricultural 
purposes because they produce nothing. These peoples, 
during long-forgotten centuries, have followed the hunt 



64 TENURE AND TOIL. 

and the chase, and in many instances we find that they 
had no more idea of a moral law or moral nature than 
the beasts of the forest or the fishes of the sea, where 
the stronger kills and eats the weaker and the larger 
swallows the smaller. On the contrary, wherever we 
find a high type of manhood, a tribe, or people plough- 
ing the fields, cultivating the soil, and living according 
to the command of God to Adam, " In the sweat of 
thy face, thou shalt eat bread," we also find individual 
ownership in land, that the land is valuable, and that 
every man may sell and receive for it an equivalent 
in money or goods. 

Men of the most profound learning and refined 
scholarship, whose lives have been spent in the study 
of books and who know little about the practical 
affairs of life or the real wants of society, betray an 
idolatrous veneration for Plato's Republic, the writings 
of Diogenes, Zeno, and others, who took Minos and 
Lycurgus for their models. True, it is said that " in the 
very bosom of corruption, Lycurgus regenerated Sparta 
and gave her a degree of strength and stability by 
which for a series of years she was enabled to wield 
the sceptre of Greece/' but can we find in the vaunted 
laws of Lycurgus one rule of action that is commend- 
able, practicable, or grounded in the principles of 
natural justice? We are informed that Lycurgus 
found a greater part of the people so poor that they 
had not one inch of land of their own, while a 
smaller number of individuals were possessed of all 
the lands and wealth of the country, and in order to 
punish indolence, envy, fraud, luxury, and to prevent 



A RESUME. (J5 

extreme poverty and excessive wealth, he persuaded 
the citizens to give up all their lands to the common- 
wealth and to make a new division of them that they 
might all live together in perfect equality, and that 
no preferences or honors should be given save to virtue 
and merit. This scheme Lycurgus put into execution 
j>artly by persuasion, partly by force, by dividing the 
lands of Laconia into thirty thousand parts, which he 
distributed among the inhabitants of the country, and 
the territories of Sparta into nine thousand parts, which 
he distributed among an equal number of citizens, and 
having met with great opposition in effecting a division 
of all their movable goods and chattels, he resorted to 
the expediency of demonetizing gold and silver, and 
made iron alone current money, so that it required a 
cart and two oxen to carry home a sum of money 
equivalent to twenty pounds sterling or to one hundred 
dollars. In accomplishing these ends, Lycurgus con- 
verted Sparta into a military camp, armed his fellow- 
citizens, and made them a nation of warriors and 
soldiers. He destroyed her commerce, prohibited the 
cultivation of the arts and sciences, demonetized her cur- 
rency, and made her a nation of slaves and Helots over 
whom the privileged few might domineer as though they 
were cattle and shoot them down as dogs. Let those 
who may laud the laws and institutions of the mythi- 
cal Lycurgus. It occurs to the writer that they should 
be considered fit only for Hottentots or Tartars. 

Rollin, the scholar, the thinker, the historian, in his 
reflections upon the government of Sparta and the laws 
of Lycurgus, says, " The design formed by Lycurgus 

e 6* 



QQ TENURE AND TOIL. 

of making equal distribution of the lands among the 
citizens, and of entirely banishing from Sparta all lux- 
ury, avarice, lawsuits, and dissensions, by abolishing 
the use of gold and silver, would appear to us a scheme 
of a commonwealth finely conceived in speculation, but 
utterly impracticable in execution, did not history as- 
sure us that Sparta actually subsisted in that condition 
for many ages. 

" When I place the transaction I am now speaking 
of among the laudable part of Lycurgus's laws, I do 
not pretend it to be absolutely unexceptionable ; for I 
think it can scarce be reconciled with that general law 
of nature which forbids the taking away one man's 
property to give it to another ; and yet this is what was 
really done upon this occasion. Therefore, in this affair 
of dividing the lands, I consider only so much of it as 
was truly commendable in itself and worthy of ad- 
miration. 

" Can we possibly conceive that a man could persuade 
the richest and most opulent inhabitants of a city to 
resign all their revenues and estates, to level and con- 
found themselves with the poorest of the people, to 
subject themselves to a new way of living, both severe 
in itself and full of restraint ; in a word, to debar them- 
selves of the use of everything wherein the happiness 
and comfort of life is thought to consist? And yet 
this is what Lycurgus actually effected in Sparta." 

Imagine to yourself the people of a city composed 
of a million inhabitants depending upon public caterers 
to prepare and serve their morning coffee, noon luncheon, 
and evening meal. Yet historians, commentators, and 



A RESUME. 67 

philosophers extol as not among the least of his laws 
that which compelled all the citizens, their wives and 
children, to eat at public tables. Such a custom might 
do in a small community clustered together, sheltered 
from the rays of a tropical sun, but how would it suc- 
ceed in New York or Chicago where the thermometer 
touches 30° below zero? 

" But who, to feed a jaunty coxcomb, 
"Would have an Abyssinian ox come ? 
Or serve a dish of fricassees, 
To clodpoles in a coat of frieze ?" 

Lycurgus before establishing his institutions jour- 
neyed into Crete, Egypt, and Asia Minor to study the 
manners, customs, and laws of those peoples. He per- 
suaded Thales, the Cretan poet, to proceed to Athens, 
where, by the influence of his poetry upon the under- 
standings and hearts of his countrymen, they might be 
gradually prepared for those alterations in government 
and manners which he was then contemplating. Not- 
withstanding the great wisdom, learning, and foresight 
of the law-giver, he was convinced that he could ac- 
complish but little by appealing to the understanding 
alone. He therefore availed himself of whatever the 
temper, the prejudices, and superstitions of the times 
afforded to insure the success of his undertaking. He 
journeyed to Delphi to- consult the oracle, and armed 
with the decree of divine sanction he unfolded his plans 
and established his laws among a superstitious people. 
Minos had persuaded the Cretans that his laws were 
delivered to him from Jupiter. Moses persuaded the 



63 TENURE AND TOIL. 

Hebrews that the laws written by him on the tables of 
stone were traced there by the finger of God on Mount 
Sinai. Instances of other ancient legislators might be 
given in which they found it convenient to declare that 
their institutions were direct from the gods. For that 
self-love in human nature, which would but illy have 
borne with the superiority of genius acknowledged in 
an unaided law-giver, found an ease and satisfaction in 
adopting and submitting to his new regulations when 
presented as a gift from heaven. Among every people 
we discover an awe and reverence of the Divinity; an 
homage and honor paid to him ; and an open profession 
of an entire dependence upon him in all their under- 
takings, in all their necessities, in all their dangers and 
adversities. Incapable of themselves to penetrate into 
futurity and to compel success, we find them careful to 
consult the Divinity by oracles, and by other methods 
of a like nature ; and to merit his protection by vows, 
prayers, and offerings. It is by the same supreme au- 
thority they believe the most solemn treaties are ren- 
dered inviolable. It is that which gives sanction to 
their oaths ; and to it by imprecations is referred the 
punishment of such crimes and enormities as escape the 
knowledge and power of men. In all their concerns, 
voyages, journeys, marriages, diseases, the Divinity is 
ever invoked. 

The main design of Lycurgus in establishing his 
laws, and especially that one which prohibited the use 
of gold and silver, was to curb and restrain the ambi- 
tion of his citizens ; to disable them from making con- 
quests, and to force them to confine themselves within 



A RESUME. 69 

the narrow bounds of their own country without carry- 
ing their views and pretensions further. So long as 
the Spartans worshipped at the shrine of the law-giver 
with a superstitious veneration little less than that ac- 
corded to the Delphian god, they obeyed his laws and 
observed his ordinances. While this little republic 
which he founded remained in seclusion from the rest 
of mankind, its people were comparatively happy and 
contented. 

" Though poor the peasant's hut, his feasts though small, 
He sees his little lot the lot of all." 

No gloomier picture than that presented by the mis- 
erable condition of the Helots of Sparta can be found 
in the world's history. Every mean device was adopted 
to reduce them below the level of beasts. They were 
even forced into a condition of drunkenness for the 
purpose of exhibiting them in sportive mockery to the 
Spartan youth, so that he might the more keenly detest 
their contemptible condition. It was customary for the 
most active and intelligent of the Spartan braves to go 
into the country and lie in ambush, armed with spear 
and dagger, and rush out from their hiding-places to 
murder the unoffending Helots, and those in whom any 
superiority of spirit or genius had been observed were 
singled out as the special objects of these fiendish and 
murderous attacks. Differing from Burn's conception 
of the cruelty of devils where he says, — 

"I'm sure sma' pleasure it can gie, 
Ev'n to a deil, 
To skelp an' scaud poor dogs like me, 
An' hear us squeel !" 



70 TENURE AND TOIL. 

the Spartans seemed to take pleasure in such devilish 
work, and Spartan institutions seemed to encourage it 
on the pretence that the Helots might revolt and fight 
for their freedom. The ambition of Spartan warriors 
could not long be confined to practising their lances 
upon the unoffending Helots. Like Kasselas, the 
prince of Abyssinia, confined in the happy valley, they 
longed to go beyond the confines of Spartan territory, 
to go abroad in the great world and measure spears and 
daggers and lances with foemen more worthy of their 
steel, with Messenians, Persians, and Athenians. Am- 
bition stimulated valor, and with valor came the love 
of conquest and its inseparable attendants, avarice and 
luxury. Sparta soon became intoxicated over the 
wealth which flowed into her from the plunder of sur- 
rounding states, and the institutions of Lycurgus van- 
ished as her wealth and commerce increased. Perished 
the institutions of this lauded law-giver, — institutions 
more detestable than feudalism, which no one can con- 
template without feelings of scorn and indignation. 

Rollin pertinently observes that, " In order to per- 
ceive more clearly the defects in the laws of Lycurgus, 
we have only to compare them with those of Moses, 
which we know were dictated by more than human 
wisdom. ... To begin, for instance, with that ordi- 
nance relating to the choice they made of their children, 
which of them were to be brought up, and which ex- 
posed to perish ; who would not be shocked at the un- 
just and inhuman custom of pronouncing sentence of 
death upon all such infants as had the misfortune to be 
born with a constitution that appeared too weak and 



A RESUME. 71 

delicate to undergo the fatigues and exercises to which 
the commonwealth destined all her subjects ?" 

The puny infant who developed into the giant intel- 
lect of a Sir Isaac Newton, under the tender care, fond 
solicitude, and endearing love which our Christian civ- 
ilization inculcates in the mother, would have been 
consigned, when born, to undergo the sentence of death 
under the laws and institutions of Lycurgus, because 
he had the misfortune to be born possessed of a feeble 
constitution. I will not refer to those other model re- 
publics and political Utopias of which we read, because 
they would be deemed as barren of utility for this age 
and these times, as the laws and institutions of Lycur- 
gus would be considered inhuman and barbarous. 



BOOK II. 



THE ORIGIN, GROWTH, AND DECADENCE OF 
FEUDAL TENURES. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE VILLAGE-MAEK. 



I have no disposition to question the theories ad- 
vanced by men of learning and research who contend 
that no vestige of the Roman laws and customs can be 
found in the existing laws of the Anglo-Saxons. I simply 
declare that the history of Rome is the history of "The 
Western Empire," the empire of Charlemagne. Wipe 
out Roman history, Roman laws, Roman customs, and 
Roman civilization, and what remains to guide us in 
our investigations? Nothing. In ancient, differing 
from modern, times, the country was cultivated by the 
inhabitants of towns and villages. That Rome which 
became the seat of empire, the centre of civilization, 
was, in its infancy, but a walled town on the Palatine 
Hill. The government of Rome was merely a con- 
federation of towns or villages. Ancient Italy is said 
to have contained over eleven hundred towns. Teutons, 
Franks, Gauls, and Britons, although regarded as bar- 
barians, lived in towns and villages. Gaul and Spain 
72 



THE VILLAGE-MARK. 73 

could boast of towns and cities of some pretensions 
connected with each other and the capital of Rome by 
the imperial high-ways, — those marvels of Roman enter- 
prise and monuments of Roman civilization. The 
Teutonic towns were merely the aggregate of indi- 
viduals of each tribe or community held together by 
the ties of kinship or the necessity of mutual defence. 
Their edifices built of rough timber, thatched with 
straw and pierced at the top to leave a free passage for 
smoke, were not even contiguous. Men dwelt together 
in communities; it was their normal condition, and 
when they wished to migrate or change their place of 
habitation they moved in communities. These commu- 
nities were governed by well-known and, in some 
respects, salutary laws and customs. It would be an 
interesting but unprofitable undertaking to trace the 
history and recount the laws, customs, and manners 
prevailing in these village communities. Each tribe 
or community occupied a district or mark divided into 
three parts. 

First, The town or village, in which the dwelling- 
house and space surrounding was held by the heads 
of families in individual proprietorship. This was 
the estate that descended to the sons, or went in the 
male line. It was called Salic land, because the mansion 
of a German was called sal, and the space enclosing it 
salbac, — the homestead. When the Franks issued from 
their own country, and gained possession in Gaul, they 
still continued to give to their new settlements the name 
of Salic land ; and hence, the law of the Franks that 
regulated the course of descent was called the Salic law. 
d 7 



74 TENURE AND TOIL. 

Secondly, There was the arable portion, or the district 
of cultivated land, in which separate plots were held, 
for a time, at all events, in severalty, by individual 
members of the tribe or community, subject to certain 
established regulations as to common, cultivation, enjoy- 
ment, and the like. 

Thirdly, There was the common or waste land not 
appropriated to individuals at all, on which the whole 
community had rights of pasturage; and also, vary- 
ing in different localities according to the nature of 
their surroundings, there was the right of fishing in 
the waters and of hunting in the forests, and also the 
right of turbary, — the right to dig turf for fuel on" the 
bog-land. The peasantry in European countries can 
find evidences of these ancient village-marks in every 
community, I am told, without the aid of learned 
treatises upon the subject. In Ireland, where the 
Feudal system never gained a footing, we can trace the 
village-mark to an absolute certainty. True, the worst 
agrarian system to be found anywhere exists there, but 
neither the invasion and settlement of the Danes, the 
plunder and rapacity of the Normans, nor the cruel, de- 
vastating wars of Elizabeth and Cromwell, could eradi- 
cate it. In the town-land of Springfield,* parish of Clon- 
davadog,t Barony of Kilmacrenan, Diocese of Raphoe, 
County of Donegal, Province of Ulster, Ireland, a 
Morier, a Laveleye, or a Sir Henry Maine could find in 
the attendant vestiges of collective property materials 



* The birthplace of the writer, 
■j- Commonly called Fanad. 



THE VILLAGE-MARK. 75 

for an interesting essay on early institutions or village 
communities. In that township, and no doubt in every 
township among the wild and picturesque mountains 
and valleys of Donegal, the village- mark has defied 
the mutations in the law of property, has withstood 
the changes introduced by conquerors and taskmasters, 
and resisted the ravages of time. The hut or straw- 
roofed cabin and the plot of ground surrounding, the 
long and narrow strips of arable land, the right of 
pasturage and the right to dig a certain quantity of 
turf, regulated by the amount of rent paid by the tenant, 
— these all remain as evidences of the village-mark, but 
the person in possession, and to whom the priliveges 
attach, has in them no vested or proprietary rights. 
Everything is held at the will or caprice of an absentee 
landlord. But this state of affairs does not add strength 
to the argument in favor of a community of property. 
Before the Norman invasion, Ireland had a well-defined 
code of laws known as the Brehon laws. According 
to these laws, each occupant of land belonged to a tribe, 
and he was liable in common with other members of 
his tribe to certain obligations, such, for example, as the 
support of aged members of the tribe, who had no 
children to support them ; he was also subject to 
discharge his proportionate liability of contracts entered 
into by others, when made with the consent of the 
tribe. As his property was considered, to a certain 
extent, tribal property, he could not dispose of his 
individual interest therein until he first offered it to his 
nearest kinsman or some other member of the tribe. 
Similar restrictions are found attached to the enjoyment 



76 TENURE AND TOIL. 

and transfer of tribal property wherever found. These 
restrictions might depreciate the value, but did not 
materially interfere with the beneficial use and enjoy- 
ment of property. 

There was a time when the Roman empire included 
within its limits the fairest part of the earth, and the 
most civilized portion of mankind, — when the gentle 
but powerful influence of her laws and manners had 
gradually cemented the union of the provinces, and the 
public administration was conducted by the virtue and 
abilities of her emperors, who were content with main- 
taining the dignity of the realm without attempting to 
enlarge its limits. Guided by prudence and moderation, 
they invited the friendship of the surrounding nations, 
and for a time succeeded in convincing mankind that 
the Roman power, raised above the temptation of con- 
quest, was actuated only by the love of order and jus- 
tice. Public virtue and patriotism guided the councils 
of the republic, and inspired the Roman troops to 
deeds of valor and renown. The golden eagle which 
glittered in front of the legion was the object of their 
fondest devotion ; nor was it deemed less impious than 
ignoble to abandon that sacred ensign in the hour of 
danger. 

Until the privileges of the Romans had been pro- 
gressively extended to all the inhabitants of the empire, 
an important distinction was preserved between Italy 
and the. provinces. The former was considered the 
centre of public unity and the firm basis of the consti- 
tution. Italy claimed the birth or at least the residence 
of the emperors and the senate. From the foot of the 



DISINTEGRATION OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 77 

Alps to the extremity of Calabria, all the natives of 
Italy were born citizens of Rome. Their partial dis- 
tinctions were obliterated, and they became moulded into 
one great nation, unified by language, manners, and 
civil institutions. The republic gloried in her generous 
policy, and was frequently repaid by the merit and ser- 
vices of her adopted sons. Some of the most illustrious 
names which make up the galaxy of her fame may be 
traced to the provinces. 



CHAPTER II. 

DISINTEGRATION OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 

While the nations of the empire were almost im- 
perceptibly absorbed by the Roman name and Roman 
people, there still remained, in the centre of every 
province and of every family, a servile class who en- 
dured the burdens without sharing the benefits of society. 
The greater number of this class were barbarians, taken 
captive by thousands in war or purchased at a vile price. 
It was a maxim of ancient jurisprudence that a slave 
had no country of his own, although he acquired with 
his liberty an admission into that political society of 
which his patron was a member. The honorable dis- 
tinction of freedman was confined to those slaves only, 
who for just causes, and with the approbation of the 
magistrate should receive a solemn and legal manu- 

7* 



78 TENURE AND TOIL. 

mission. Even they obtained no more than the private 
rights of citizens, and were rigorously excluded from 
civil or military honors. Whatever the merit or for- 
tune of their sons/ they likewise were regarded un- 
worthy of a seat in the senate; nor were the traces of 
a servile origin allowed to be completely obliterated 
until the third or fourth generation. It is said that 
four hundred slaves were maintained in a single palace 
at Rome, and also that a freed man during the reign of 
Augustus left behind him three thousand six hundred 
yoke of oxen, two hundred and fifty thousand head 
of smaller cattle, and four thousand one hundred and 
sixteen slaves. 

Slavery and democracy cannot long exist side by side. 
True democracy like true religion destroys castes and 
levels conditions. The abuse of the one leads to dis- 
order and anarchy, of the other to fanaticism and 
superstition. While true democracy was unknown to 
the Roman people and Roman institutions, neverthe- 
less it was through the spirit of democracy, however 
base, the slaves were enabled to make some advance- 
ments in their social and political conditions. Their 
grievances, long stifled by the voice of authority, at 
length found a responsive echo in the discontent of the 
soldier who became insubordinate from excessive indo- 
lence and contemptuous of power from excessive in- 
dulgence. As the civil authority was gradually 
usurped by the military, disintegration of the empire 
became manifest not only at Rome but in the prov- 
inces. Pomp and splendor sharpened the avarice, 
while luxury and sensuality dulled the genius of the 



DISINTEGRATION OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 79 

people. Personal valor, no longer nourished by the 
love of conquest or the pride of independence, became 
emasculated and the military spirit languished. Public 
patriotism became an article of bargain and sale, cor- 
ruption and bribery stalked at will through all avenues 
to justice, and ministers of the state became subservient 
tools in the hands of military marplots. Without a 
violation of the principles of the constitution, the gen- 
eral of the Roman armies might receive and exercise 
an authority almost despotic over the soldiers and the 
subjects, as well as over the enemies of the republic. 
The dictator or consul had the right to command the 
service of the Roman youth, and to punish disobedi- 
ence by the most severe and ignominious penalties, by 
confiscating his property and by selling his person into 
slavery. The right to declare war or to negotiate terms 
of peace was usually decided by legislative authority ; 
but when the arms of the legions were carried a great 
distance from Italy these responsibilities devolved 
upon the generals who were the accredited representa- 
tives of the emperor. 

When the crafty Augustus played the comedy of 
refusing the purple in order that its glory might be 
thrust upon him, he was authorized to retain his mili- 
tary command, supported by a numerous body of 
guards, even in time of peace, and in the heart of the 
capital. By thus introducing the Praetorian guards, as 
it were, into the palace and the senate, Augustus and 
his successors inspired them with a confidence in their 
own strength, and encouraged them to despise the 
weakness of the civil government ; to view the vices of 



80 TENURE AND TOIL. 

their masters with familiar contempt, and to lay aside 
that reverential awe which only distance and mystery 
can inspire for imaginary power. In the luxurious 
idleness of an opulent city, their pride was nourished 
by a consciousness of irresistible weight, nor was it 
possible to conceal from them that the person of the 
sovereign, the authority of the senate, the public treas- 
ury, and the seat of empire were all in their hands. 
To divert the Praetorian bands from these dangerous 
reflections, the firmest and best-established princes were 
obliged to mix blandishments with commands, rewards 
with punishments, to flatter their pride, indulge their 
pleasures, connive at their irregularities, and to pur- 
chase their precarious allegiance by liberal donations 
which, after the elevation of Claudius, was exacted as 
a legal claim on the accession of every new emperor. 
They maintained, and who was to resist their preten- 
sions, that according to a proper construction of the 
constitution their consent was necessary to the appoint- 
ment of an emperor. Incited by an insatiable greed 
for gain they violated the sanctity of the throne in the 
atrocious murder of Pertinax, and dishonored its ma- 
jesty by negotiating with Sulpicianus, the price to be 
paid for the imperial dignity. Apprehensive that, by 
private contract they would not obtain a just price for 
so valuable a commodity, the Praetorians ran out upon 
the ramparts, and with a loud voice proclaimed that 
the Roman world was for sale to the highest bidder at 
public auction. The vain old Didius Julianus, a 
wealthy senator, at the bidding of his family and para- 
sites, hastened to the Praetorian camp, and from the 



DISINTEGRATION OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, gl 

foot of the rampart openly bid against Sulpicianus, and 
became the successful purchaser by offering to each 
soldier a sum equal to about one thousand dollars. 
The Prsetorian guard conducted the new emperor to 
the throne, and the senate, which though inclined, 
dared not to oppose, ratified his election, and conferred 
upon him all the several branches of the imperial 
power. The empire for a time survived, but never re- 
covered from this, the crowning insult of a long cate- 
gory of abasements heaped upon Roman valor and 
Roman virtue. Tyranny and murder, bribery and 
corruption, usurpation and rebellion, civil war and 
sedition convulsed the empire from centre to circum- 
ference. The emperors, eager to uphold the tottering 
dynasty and to render more secure their own precarious 
title to the throne, had received into their service 
entire battalions from the ranks of the barbarians, and 
to recompense their services had assigned them large 
tracts of land in the frontier provinces. These mer- 
cenaries, devoid of those virtues which made the legions 
of the commonwealth models of discipline and valor, 
regarded the provinces as their property and the people 
as their prey. The ancient proprietors, deprived of 
the use of arms, overawed by the military, plundered 
by rapacious governors, and drained of their wealth by 
hordes of ruthless tax-gatherers, had neither the ability 
nor the inclination to resist the invaders from whom 
they had little to fear, because it would be difficult to 
render their condition more wretched. The strength of 
the empire, which had always consisted in arms rather 
than in fortifications, was insensibly undermined, and 
/ 



82 TENURE AND TOIL. 

the fairest provinces were exposed to the rapaciousness 
or ambition of the barbarians who swarmed around 
the Roman world like vultures around their prey. 



CHAPTER III. 

GERMANIC FEUDALISM. 

Almost the whole of Northern Germany, Denmark, 
Norway, Sweden, Finland, Lavonia, Prussia, and the 
greater part of Poland, were peopled by the various 
tribes of one great nation whose complexion, manners, 
and language denoted a common origin and preserved a 
striking resemblance. In the rude institutions of these 
barbarians, and especially those of the German tribes, 
we may still discover some traces of our present laws 
and manners. They were unacquainted with the use of 
letters and had no knowledge of those arts and sciences 
which gave to Greece and Rome immortal fame. They 
lived in camps or rude fortifications constructed in the 
centre of the wood. The game of various sorts with 
which the forests were plentifully stocked, supplied them 
with food and exercise. Numerous herds of cattle con- 
stituted their principal source of wealth. Corn (oats) 
and barley were the principal products which the land 
yielded. The care of the house and family, the man- 
agement of the lands and cattle, were assigned to the 
old and the infirm, to women and slaves. The assem- 
bly of the warriors or freemen of the tribe was convened 



GERMANIC FEUDALISM. 83 

at stated times or on sudden emergencies. The trial 
of public offences, the election of magistrates, and the 
great business of peace and war were determined by its 
independent voice. A general of the tribe was elected 
on occasions of danger, and if the danger was great or 
pressing, several tribes concurred in the choice of the 
same general. The bravest warrior was chosen to lead 
his countrymen to battle by his example rather than 
by his command. But his power, however limited, 
was still invidious. For they were so jealous of any 
encroachment upon their liberties that the authority 
which they conferred upon a chief, intended to meet a 
given emergency, terminated with the occasion which 
gave rise to it. Princes were appointed in a general 
assembly to administer justice, or rather to compromise 
differences in their respective districts, to dispose of 
the landed property therein, and to distribute it every 
year according to a new division. At the same time 
they were not authorized to punish with death, to im- 
prison, or even to strike a citizen. 

When the youths attained the age of manhood they 
were introduced as equals in the general council, and it 
was their pride to be numbered among the faithful 
companions of some renowned chief to whom they 
devoted their arms and services. To be ever sur- 
rounded by them was the pride and strength of the 
chiefs, their ornament in peace, their defence in war. 
In the hour of danger it was shameful for a chief to 
be surpassed in valor by his companions ; shameful for 
the companion not to equal the valor of his chief. To 
survive the chieftain's fall in battle brought lasting 



84 TENURE AND TOIL. 

infamy to his chosen adherents. To protect his per- 
son, and to adorn his glory with the trophies of their 
own exploits were the most sacred of their duties. 
The chief fought for victory, the companions for the 
chief. 

Such were the characteristics and institutions of the 
barbarous tribes who in a few centuries overthrew the 
throne of the Csesars, caused a total change in the 
geography of the Roman provinces, reduced into feudal 
dynasties the Western Empire, and gave to every nation 
of Europe a new race of kings. Various causes had 
contributed to accelerate the downfall of the Roman 
empire, which it is unnecessary to discuss here. Suffice 
it to say that towards the close of the fourth century 
commenced that famous invasion which resulted in the 
downfall of the Western Empire. From the extremity 
of Scandinavia to the frontiers of China, nation after 
nation appeared, and although often repulsed and 
driven back beyond the confines of the empire, they 
returned in increased numbers and with renewed 
energy until the whole empire was dismembered, the 
older inhabitants plundered of their movable property, 
their estates confiscated, and themselves reduced to 
slavery. The barbarians who established themselves 
in the provinces, introduced the political institutions 
by which they had been governed in their native 
countries. These institutions partook of the nature of 
military democracies under a king or chief, generals 
and subordinate officers, who were elected or chosen to 
fill these offices by the freemen of the tribes. In the 
distribution of the spoils taken and in "the division of 



GERMANIC FEUDALISM. $5 

the estates confiscated, the king himself could claim 
nothing but what fell to his lot. While he received a 
quantity proportioned to the dignity of his rank, he 
held it by no higher or different tenure than that by 
which the soldier in the ranks held the quantity al- 
lotted to him. The property so acquired by allotment 
is known in law as allodial, — that is, he to whom it was 
allotted was not only entitled to its possession and 
enjoyment, but he could dispose of it at pleasure or 
transmit it as an inheritance to his children. In this 
respect the warriors who followed the fortunes of their 
king not by constraint but from choice were his equals. 
It is quite difficult to determine whether the lands 
allotted to them were held according to the Roman 
laws or the laws and customs prevailing in their tribes. 
But as the land-laws of a country become, as it were, 
stamped upon its soil, it is reasonable to assume that 
the Roman laws regulating the sale, transfer, and 
descent of real property, obtained for a time, at least, 
after her other institutions had perished. 

It was a rule among all ancient nations and tribes 
that the victor became the lawful owner of the enemy 
whom he had subdued, and over wdiom he had the 
power of life and death. As the vanquished inhabi- 
tants of the Roman provinces were reduced to a state 
of slavery in the allotment of the confiscated estates, 
the slaves residing upon them became the property of 
him to whom the land was allotted. The soldier who 
was always a freeman of the tribe took possession of 
his allotment as his own, and was under no obligation 
to take an oath of fealty to his king or chief as a con- 



86 TENURE AND TOIL. 

dition upon which to receive it. Nor was such an 
oath exacted of him. We must look to a later period 
to find this peculiar investiture accompanying grants 
of real property. As the original proprietors were not 
all reduced to slavery, these allotments and distribu- 
tions of property were confined to those districts sub- 
dued and peopled by the invaders. In many districts 
of the provinces the original inhabitants joined the in- 
vaders in their warfare against the empire, or capitu- 
lated on satisfactory terms, and were permitted to 
retain their possessions upon rendering to the conquer- 
ors the tribute agreed upon. The incursions of the 
barbarians did not resemble the conquests of the Roman 
legions during the commonwealth. The latter, when 
they conquered a province, established therein Roman 
laws and institutions, but the raids of the former were 
made, in many instances, in quest of spoils and not of 
homes and habitations. The tribes who first settled in 
adjacent territories were connected by ties of consan- 
guinity, affinity, or hospitality with the provincials, 
officials, and former proprietors, and by treaties and 
agreements. A portion of the lands were left in the 
possession of their owners ; and, although this portion 
was abridged by each successive nation of invaders, 
yet it was many centuries before the whole transfer 
was completely effected. As states, like individuals, 
retain their identity though changed in their constitu- 
ent elements, neither the manners nor customs of tribes 
which inhabited the provinces prior to their conquest 
by the Romans, nor the Roman laws and jurisprudence 
ingrafted upon them, were entirely superseded .by those 



ANGLO-SAXON FEUDALISM. ^7 

of the invaders. From these combined elements and 
the necessities of the times a new institution was 
evolved, which in process of time became known to 
the world as the Feudal System. 



CHAPTER IV. 

ANGLO-SAXON FEUDALISM. 

Among the states which rose on the ruins of the 
Roman empire, that of the Franks attained the most 
imperial greatness, and for several ages it sustained the 
character of being the most powerful kingdom in 
Europe. This monarchy, founded by Clovis, and ex- 
tended still more by his successors, embraced nearly all 
of Gaul and the greater part of Germany. The king- 
dom of Clovis was divided into a number of districts, 
each under the government of a count or duke whose 
duty it was to administer justice, preserve tranquillity, 
collect the royal revenues, and to lead when required 
the free proprietors into the field. These offices, con- 
ferred during pleasure or for a limited period, gradually 
became hereditary and proprietary. While the dis- 
tinction of birth was not entirely disregarded in those 
times, yet the aristocracy of wealth or of official posi- 
tion preceded it. A Frank of large estate was given the 
title of noble. If he wasted or was despoiled of his 
wealth his descendants fell into the mass of the people 



gg TENURE AND TOIL. 

and the new possessor became noble in his stead. 
Only they whose parents were rich in possessions were 
considered noble by descent. In those times a pecuni- 
ary compensation was paid to the relatives of persons 
killed or murdered which was estimated according to 
the rank to which the deceased belonged, and from the 
differences made in the prices or amounts paid accord- 
ing to rank we must conclude that there existed the 
elements of aristocratic privileges. Wealth and pos- 
sessions being the essential prerequisites connecting 
eminent privileges with posterity, an ambitious prince 
could find little difficulty in supplying his favorites 
and sycophants with them by the grant of hereditary 
benefices. Besides the confiscated estates distributed 
in the general public allotments, already described, 
great tracts of country remained uncultivated and un- 
inhabited. These lands, which in process of time 
became known as " crown lands" or " royal domains," 
became the property of the government whether a 
monarchy, a democracy, or a commonwealth. 

These lands, located in different parts of the king- 
dom, not only formed the most regular source of the 
king's revenue but supplied him with the means of 
rewarding the services of favorites and of purchasing 
the friendship of those whose enmity he had reason to 
fear. The recipients of these royal bounties were more 
closely connected with the crown than were the allo- 
dial proprietors. The possessor of a benefice was bound 
to serve his sovereign in the field, but, of allodial pro- 
prietors, only those whose property was of certain 
value were called upon for personal services. The 



ANGLO-SAXON FEUDALISM. 89 

owners of these benefices carved out portions of them 
which they gave to their own favorites and retainers, 
and in this manner the custom best known by the 
name of "Subinfeudation" became universal. The 
oath of fidelity which favorites of royalty had taken, 
and the homage which they had paid to the sover- 
eign, they in turn exacted from their vassals. The 
essence of the compact between the lord and vassal 
was the reciprocity of service and protection. The 
abuse of benefices or fiefs was carried to such an extent 
by the Franks that almost all property had become 
feudal before the end of the tenth century. Not only 
grants of land and portions of large estates, but govern- 
ments, dukedoms, and counties, were conferred and 
held by this species of tenure. The consequence of 
this was that the great, by the allurement of fiefs or 
benefices, became devoted followers of the king, while 
the body of the nation sold themselves as retainers 
of the great. In the descending line of feudal bond- 
age, a condition of servitude existed which resembled, 
in some degree, the serfs of Russia or the negroes 
of the Southern States of the American Union about 
fifty years ago. These bondmen of the same race as 
their masters were called serfs and villeins.* No rest- 



* At a very early period after the Norman Conquest the name 
of slave disappears, and the lowest ranks in the rural districts were 
called villeins. There was a legal difference between the villein 
in gross, whose bondage was to the person of the lord, and who 
could be sold and transferred from one to another the same as the 
American slaves before the war of the Kebellion, and the villeins 
regardant whose bondage was to the land and who could be sold 

8* 



90 TENURE AND TOIL. 

ing-place can be found in the depths of human degra- 
dation at which to fix the status of the serf, and as to 
the villein it seems that the lord could seize whatever 
he acquired or collected, or remove him from the soil 
at pleasure. The tenure bound him to what were 
called villein services, ignoble in nature and indeter- 
minate in degree; the felling of timber, the carrying 
of manure, the repairing of roads for his master, who 
seems to have possessed an equally unbounded right 
over his labors and its fruits. Against his master he 
had no right of action ; because his indemnity in dam- 
ages, if he should have recovered, might have been 
immediately taken away. If he fled from his master's 
service, or the land which he held, a writ issued for 
his apprehension, and his master pursued and recov- 
ered his fugitive slave. His children were born to 
the same state of slavery. The same causes which led 
to the overthrow of feudal institutions brought about 
the freedom of these bondmen, and their condition up 
to this period need not be further discussed. 

The mode of warfare then universally practised ren- 
dered the lord independent of aid from his vassals and 
slaves. Battles were decided by steel-clad knights, who 
rode through the unprotected infantry as a modern 
reaper or mower sweeps through the wheat -field. It 
was their brother knights alone who either attracted 

only with the land which they held in villeinage. The one prob- 
ably represented a class taken in battle, carried away and reduced 
to slavery by their captors, the other a class of persons also con- 
quered but permitted to remain with their families upon the land 
to cultivate it for the benefit of their captors. 



ANGLO-SAXON FEUDALISM. 91 

their notice or were deemed worthy of their hostility. 
The incursions of invaders, the ravages and rapacity of 
neighboring chiefs, provoked but little resentment while 
their victims were only the slaves of the country; and 
the baron, secure in his well-fortified castle, beheld with 
indifference his villages in flames, and the long files of 
weeping captives who were carried off from beneath 
his ramparts. " Liberty, Equality, and Tranquillity," 
says Guizot, " were all alike wanting, from the tenth 
to the thirteenth century, to the inhabitants of each 
lord's domains; their sovereign was at their very doors, 
and none of them was hidden from him or beyond 
reach of his mighty arm. Of all tyrannies, the worst 
is that which can thus keep account of its subjects, 
and which sees from its seat the limits of its empire. 
The caprices of the human will then show themselves 
in all their intolerable extravagance, and, moreover, 
with irresistible promptness. It is then, too, that in- 
equality of conditions makes itself more rudely felt; 
riches, might, independence, every advantage and 
every right present themselves every instant to the 
gaze of misery, weakness, and servitude. The inhabi- 
tants of fiefs could not find consolation in the bosom 
of tranquillity ; incessantly mixed up in the quarrels 
of their lord, a prey to his neighbors' devastations, 
they led a life still more precarious and still more rest- 
less than that of the lords themselves, and they had to 
put up at one and the same time with the presence of 
war, privilege, and absolute power." 

Although slavery had existed in England prior to 
the Conquest, this species of feudal servitude was first 



92 TENURE AND TOIL. 

introduced by William the Conqueror, and enforced in 
all its rigor and barbarity among the people. Within 
twenty years from the accession of William, almost 
the whole soil of England was parcelled out among his 
retainers and followers. The native proprietors who 
escaped with their lives from the scenes of rapine and 
tyranny which attended the conquest were reduced to 
serfs, villeins, and vassals. The name of Englishman 
became a reproach even in his own country, and none 
of the race was raised to any office of dignity for over 
a century. The native tongue was rejected as bar- 
barous; children were instructed in the French lan- 
guage, and even the cruel laws made for the persecu- 
tion of the Saxon were not understood by him as they 
were enacted and enforced in the language of the 
stranger. The detestable game-laws, the depopulating 
of whole districts to serve as hunting-grounds for royal 
pastime, were first enacted by William the Conqueror, 
who made the penalty for killing a stag or a wild boar 
— the loss of eyes — a greater crime than the killing of 
an Englishman ; "for William loved the great game," 
says the Saxon chronicle, " as if he had been their 
father." The intolerable exactions of tribute, the 
rapine of purveyance, the inequality of the nobility, 
the sale of wardships, the right to interdict the mar- 
riage of the daughters of vassals or to compel them to 
marry those who paid the highest sum into the royal 
exchequer, the forest laws, wager of battle, the extin- 
guishment of fires at the sound of curfew, — all these 
may be traced to Norman rule and Norman feudalism 
as established in England. This state of affairs which 



FEUDAL SERVITUDE IN ENGLAND. 93 

the people long endured, might have riveted their 
chains for centuries, had not the Norman barons upon 
finding that the penalties of the rigid laws enacted for 
the punishment of the Saxon were visited upon them- 
selves, hoisted the standard of revolt, and on the plains 
of Runnymede wrung from King John, Magna Charta, 
—the boast and pride of Englishmen, and the great 
bulwark of English liberty. 



CHAPTER V. 

DECLINE AND OVERTHROW OF FEUDAL SERVITUDE 
IN ENGLAND. 

The contest which resulted in the concessions con- 
tained in Magna Charta was a contest between an un- 
scrupulous, tyrannical, and grasping monarch on the 
one side, and haughty barons, jealous of any infringe- 
ment of their ancient rights, on the other. The serfs 
and villeins composed probably nine-tenths of the pop- 
ulation of England, but their rights were not taken 
into consideration, and were not directly benefited by 
Magna Charta. These degraded human beings were 
beneath the notice of legislation, except in so far as it 
was concerned in defining their crimes and fixing their 
punishments. "No freeman shall be disseized nor 
imprisoned," etc., is the language of Magna Charta ; 
yet long centuries elapsed ere the word " freeman" was 



94 TENURE AND TOIL. 

construed to include every British subject. Indeed, it 
would seem that the last case of villeinage to be 
found in the law-books is as late as the fifteenth year 
of the reign of James I. I shall not attempt to fol- 
low villeinage in the several steps of its decline, it 
being sufficient here to note a few of the controlling 
causes which happily concurred, first, to check its prog- 
ress, and finally, to suppress it in England. The first 
of these was the influence of the Christian religion. 
After it became established, Christian princes bestowed 
large tracts of land upon religious houses in the divi- 
sion of conquered provinces. The prelates and abbots 
of these houses swore allegiance to the king or other 
superior, received the homage of their vassals, enjoyed 
the same immunities, exercised the same jurisdiction, 
and maintained the same authority as the lay lords 
among whom they dwelt. In these grants, the same as 
in grants of land made to the laity, villeins regardant, 
as they were called (meaning those who had been at- 
tached to a certain manor from time immemorial), to- 
gether with their families and all the goods and chat- 
tels which they possessed, were conveyed and passed 
with the grant of the land. The religious houses were 
not only the first to emancipate the slaves which in this 
manner became their property, but " when the dying 
slaveholder asked for the last sacraments, his spirit- 
ual attendants regularly adjured him, as he loved his 
soul, to emancipate his brethren for whom Christ had 
died."* 

* Macaulay's History of England. 



FEUDAL SERVITUDE IN ENGLAND. 95 

Many of the freed men voluntarily remained under 
the shadow and protection of the monastery to which 
they had been attached in preference to facing the 
world on their own account, just as many southern 
slaves would not leave their kind masters though 
emancipated by the proclamation of President Lincoln. 
And it was upon the ecclesiastical estates to which they 
thus became attached that the first germs of industry 
and freedom began to spring. " While the vassals of 
the military proprietors were sunk in slavery, or lost 
in the sloth which follows so degraded a state, indus- 
try was reviving under the shadow of the monastic 
walls, and the free vassals of the religious establish- 
ments were flourishing in the comparative security of 
their protection." f The cruel custom of enslaving 
captives taken in war was also abolished through the 
influence of the Christian religion, which proclaimed 
the universal equality of mankind in the sight of 
heaven. Haughty barons, who would not agree to the 
absolute release of their slaves, might consider it mu- 
tually advantageous to enter into an undertaking with 
them that, after a stated time, in consideration of faithful 
service, they should receive their manumission. These 
undertakings were usually recorded in the lord's book 
or rolls of the manorial court. These and other obli- 
gations of a like nature, in process of time, developed 
into certain customary rights out of which immediately 
grew a species of land-tenure known as copyhold 
estates. Lords of generous dispositions granted indul- 

f Alison's History of Europe. 



96 TENURE AND TOIL. 

gences which were either intended to be or readily be- 
came perpetual. Having time out of mind permitted 
their villeins and children to enjoy their possessions 
without interruption, in a regular course of descent, 
the common law, of which custom is the life, now gave 
them title to prescribe against their lords ; and, on per- 
formance of the same services, to hold their lands in 
spite of any determination of their lord's will. While 
great numbers of the villeins crept into freedom under 
the name of copyholders, many more became enfran- 
chised in a different manner. In many instances those 
whom the lord could not provide with labor, or supply 
with food and raiment, were permitted to go from 
place to place in search of employment. Such of 
them as were bound to cruel or unkind masters were 
not slow to make good their escape. If captured, the 
courts of justice took advantage of the slightest tech- 
nicality, and indulged every presumption in favor of 
the fugitive, so that his lord had little hope of carry- 
ing to a successful issue a suit for his recovery. 

Many causes and circumstances, both moral and phys- 
ical, contributed to bring about a change in the manners 
of the governing classes as well as in the mode of 
government, so that the disorders of feudal anarchy 
gradually disappeared. Religion, politics, civil com- 
motion, the black plague, the wars of the Hoses, and 
many other causes which might be mentioned, re- 
dounded to the advantage of the inferior classes, and 
by a succession of fortuitous circumstances occurring 
during several generations before the middle of the 
fifteenth century, the serfs and villeins had gradually 



EXTIRPATION OF FEUDALISM IN FRANCE. 97 

worked out their own freedom through their relation 
to the lands. So that when James I. succeeded to 
the throne the whole system of personal and territorial 
servitude had virtually expired, and that able, daring, 
unscrupulous, and grasping prince hastened the down- 
fall of feudalism, already tottering to decay. He de- 
prived the feudal lords of the crown lands which they 
had usurped from his predecessors, confiscated the 
estates of some of the most audacious, whom he con- 
demned to execution, and strengthened the royal au- 
thority by humbling the power of the grandees and 
nobles. 



CHAPTEK VI. 

EXTIRPATION OF FEUDALISM IN FRANCE. 

There is no period in the world's history which 
furnishes so much food for intelligent thought and 
profitable investigation as do the three centuries pre- 
ceding the French Revolution. What great and salu- 
tary lessons may be drawn from a study of the lives of 
the men and the philosophy of the events which that 
period produced! It was the dawn of a new era, — 
the advent of a new civilization. If proof be want- 
ing to convince mankind that to establish a free and 
stable government, the subordinate holder of power 
must have a durable interest in the soil, it will be only 
necessary to study the relative conditions of the people 



98 TENURE AND TOIL. 

of France and England during this period. The death 
of feudalism in England was so gradual, and its effects 
upon the people were apparently of such slow growth 
that it requires the closest researches of the historian to 
be able to fix the date of its complete extinction. But 
not so in France. The fires of discontent that had 
smouldered for centuries among the feudal slaves in 
France, now burst forth into a great conflagration 
which lighted the country from the Channel to the 
Pyrenees, and spread ruin and devastation all around. 
The desolation which it wrought in its expiring 
moments is its lasting monument. The best blood of 
France enriched the ashes of its pyre. 

The circumstances which contributed to the enfran- 
chisement of the serfs in England not only conferred 
upon them personal liberty, but attached to that lib- 
erty proprietary rights, which, if not valuable as a 
merchantable commodity, possessed a certain durability 
of which they could not be deprived on a moment's 
notice. Customary laws and usages added privileges 
to these proprietary rights which in process of time 
developed into hereditary tenures, at first transmissible 
from father to son, and subsequently transferable by 
gift or sale. The result was that the great body of 
the English people became comparatively contented 
with their condition, and strongly attached to the prin- 
ciples of a government which aiforded them not only 
personal freedom but the means of acquiring and en- 
joying property. And while we find occasional 
attempts at insurrection, induced by the arbitrary ex- 
actions and cruel oppressions of the feudal lords, the 



EXTIRPATION OF FEUDALISM IN FRANCE. 99 

great revolutions of this period in England cannot be 
attributed to popular discontent arising from agrarian 
causes. 

If we look to France during the same period, no 
social or political advancement is discernible in the con- 
dition of her feudal vassals. Consigned to the abase- 
ment of feudal bondage, no prolonged and resolute 
effort was made by church or State to elevate or dis- 
enthrall them. No privileges were here sanctioned by 
usage or sanctified by law to ripen into personal or pro- 
prietary rights. The hounded fugitive found here no 
Asytaan or sanctuary, ancient borough or walled city, 
where he might halt with safety or tarry in security. 
The seal of servitude here was seldom broken through 
Christian love or human compassion. In his flight 
for freedom the weary slave here, as elsewhere, found 
refreshment and repose within monastic walls, but 
even there he was not beyond reach of his pitiless, 
powerful, and persistent pursuer. For many centuries 
these human beings were deprived of civil and political 
rights, without morals, without religion, without prop- 
erty ; beings more than cattle but less than men ; beings 
who had everything to gain but nothing to lose in the 
overthrow of order and the destruction of power; 
beings who knew how to hate because never taught 
to love ; beings in whose breasts rankled the scorn of 
power, the disdain of religion to whom king and 
prince, baron and priest, were alike the subjects of 
attack, the objects of revenge. When the supreme 
moment arrived which gave license to their pent-up 
fury, what could have been expected to follow but that 



100 TENURE AND TOIL. 

vandalism of anarchy, that reign of terror, that night- 
mare of horror, that carnival of diabolism memorably 
and forever known as " The French Revolution." 

The morning of the seventeenth century saw a new 
era dawn for France when the giant intellect and 
mighty arm of Armand de Richelieu gave a new 
impetus to the world of thought, aroused anew the 
love of chivalry in the people, and restored to France 
her national fame and military glory. But it was not 
until the American Revolution, " When was fired the 
shot heard around the world ," that the Sun of Free- 
dom rose to set no more on a land of feudal slaves. 

The people of France clamored long and incessantly 
to be restored to liberty and to be relieved from the 
thraldom and oppressions of their cruel and pitiless 
taskmasters. They were answered by the minions of 
power, in the name of the law, — driven to the galleys 
and consigned to the Rastile. The peasantry now 
formed leagues and societies in every election district, 
met in club-rooms and halls to discuss their grievances 
and organize in defence of their rights. Their protests 
and remonstrances but served to excite the ridicule of 
the nobility and clergy, who deemed themselves secure 
in the support of the military. 

A general election took place amid the greatest ex- 
citement. Mirabeau, rejected by the nobility, was the 
chosen representative of the commonalty. The states- 
general assembled at Versailles. The nobility and 
clergy refused to meet with the representatives of the 
people. Refused admittance to the legislative hall by 
a cordon of soldiers, the tiers-6tat repaired without a 



EXTIRPATION OF FEUDALISM IN FRANCE. 101 

murmur to Tennis-Court. Those brave and deter- 
mined men assembled by the will of the people to do 
battle for constitutional government and the rights of 
man, endured with silent patience every affront offered 
by the nobility, remained firm, unwavering, immovable 
in their purpose and betrayed not a trust. In the his- 
toric hall of Tennis-Court, with its dark and gloomy 
walls and rude floor, with no useless ornaments or 
costly furniture, the deputies of the people stood around 
a bench to deliberate on the affairs of state, found a 
new government for France, a charter of liberty for 
her people. No dilatory motions or puerile points of 
order were interposed to retard the progress of that 
solemn, thoughtful assembly of great and patriotic men, 
bound together by the sacred tie of love of country, 
determined never to separate "till the Constitution of 
the kingdom is established and founded on a solid 
basis." 

Induced by the intrigues of the nobility, the weak 
but well-meaning Louis XVI. undertook to dissolve 
the assembly. When the Marquis de Breze* made 
known to the tiers-etat the mandate of the king, Mira- 
beau — brave, fearless, daring — rose up, and addressing 
the Marquis, said, " Go, tell your master that we are 
here by the power of the people, and that nothing but 
the power of bayonets shall drive us away/' Danger 
threatened on every side. Alarm was pictured on 
every face as the National Guards surrounded the cap- 
ital, and all communication with Paris was cut off. 

The Assembly demanded a withdrawal of the mili- 
tary, but Louis hesitated, vacillated between the prompt- 



9* 



102 TENURE AND TOIL. 

ing of his own better judgment and the pressure brought 
to bear upon him through the machinations of the no- 
bility. 

Wild rumors of the dismissal of Necker, the Minis- 
ter of Finance, and of the imprisonment of the Assem- 
bly reached Paris. Consternation seized the populace. 
They wildly hurried to the Palais-Royal, where the 
mob was assembled, listening to the most inflammatory 
speeches. A young republican mounted the table, 
held up a pair of pistols, shouting, " To arms !" The 
hour arrived, the signal given, the pent-up fury of a 
nation long in chains wildly broke the seal of feudal 
bondage. " To the Bastile !" "Storm the Bastile !" 
was heard above the deafening noise and confusion of 
the frantic rabble. Onward they pressed amid showers 
of fiery hail from guards and pickets, from post and 
garrison. 

" On, then, all Frenchmen that have hearts in their 
bodies ! Roar, with all your throats of cartilage and 
metal, ye sons of liberty ! Stir spasmodically what- 
soever of utmost faculty is in you, — soul, body, or 
spirit ! Smite, thou Louis Tournay, cartwright of the 
Marais, old soldier of the regiment Dauphine ! smite 
at that outer drawbridge chain, though the fiery hail 
whistles around thee ! Never, over nave or felloe, did 
thy axe strike such a stroke. Down with it man ; 
down with it to Orcus; let the whole accursed edi- 
fice sink thither, and tyranny be swallowed up for- 
ever \" Fell that frowning monument of feudal bar- 
barism which stood for ages a menace to French liberty, 
— fell the Bastile, which the mighty Conde" besieged 



EXTINCTION OF FEUDALISM IN PRUSSIA. 1Q3 

in vain, — fell that blood-stained tower, black with the 
crimes of centuries, before the frantic fury of the 
Revolutionists ! French vassals became citizens and 
peasant proprietors. France was free. Revolution 
made her free. 



CHAPTER VII. 

EXTINCTION OF FEUDALISM IN PRUSSIA. 

That period which marks the wane of the eigh- 
teenth and the dawn of the nineteenth centuries is a 
remarkable era in the world's history, — remarkable 
alike in the history of nations and in the progress of 
events. It is a period full of life, full of thought, 
full of social and political reforms, full of religious 
bitterness, full of warfare, full of commotion. At 
such a period, when the old landmarks had been over- 
thrown by the bitterness of the Reformation, and when 
all Europe was torn asunder by the wild passions en- 
gendered by the French Revolution, if we turn to 
Prussia we find the whole monarchy suffering from 
the devastating wars of Napoleon, whole villages laid 
waste, and whole districts depopulated. Agitation for 
land-reform, for civil and political liberty, and for 
relief from the exactions of the crown and the grasp- 
ing avarice of the nobility received a peaceful im- 
petus from the political and social revolutions now 
transpiring. Even the German serf dreamed of his 



104 TENURE AND TOIL. 

long-lost possessions, and thought of the happy days 
long past when each bauer was a freeman. He too 
had now the hardihood to assert his rights, the nerve 
and will to fight for and maintain them. 

At this period the entire land of Prussia was dis- 
tributed among three classes of society, — nobles, peas- 
ants, and burghers. These classes w r ere distinct castes, 
their personal status was reflected in the land held by 
them, and conversely, the land held determined the 
status of the holder. The noble could follow no avo- 
cation but that of his caste. The burgher had a 
monopoly of trades and industries, which, with some 
very limited exceptions were confined to the towns, and 
could not be exercised in the country. The military 
profession was closed to him as well as the higher civil 
employments. The condition of the peasant differed 
widely in the different provinces, but there was this 
feature common to all peasant-holdings that they were 
not isolated farms but united in a "commonalty," and 
these " commonalties" stood under the jurisdiction of 
the manor. The rural area of Prussia was divided 
into three districts, — the manorial district, consisting 
of demesne lands, cultivated by the manorial pro- 
prietor, and in which he exercised the functions of a 
police magistrate; the township of the peasant com- 
munity, with its arable mark and common mark, in 
which a schultze, usually an hereditary office, exer- 
cised the police authority in the name and under the 
authority of the lord of the manor and the different 
communities held by different kinds of tenure, varying 
in an ascending scale from those in which the allottees 



EXTINCTION OF FEUDALISM IN PRUSSIA. 105 

were in a state of personal villeinage with unlimited 
services, to those in which they were free settlers, who, 
though under the jurisdiction of the manor, and paying 
dues to it by virtue of that jurisdiction, were yet owners 
of their lots. The allottees were originally slaves, who 
settled upon the demesne lands, and had gradually 
emerged to the higher level of villeinage, and the free 
settlers were originally allodial owners of the land 
held by them, but who had surrendered their rights 
of full ownership to the manorial lords, but which 
they again received upon taking the oath of allegiance. 
As the nature of these tenures are elsewhere de- 
scribed it is unnecessary to go into further details here. 
Suffice it to say that the battles of Jena and Friedland, 
which led to the humiliating peace of Tilsit, hastened 
the consummation of events which led to the Edict of 
October 9, 1807, that struck the shackles from the 
slave and broke forever the yoke of feudal bondage in 
Prussia. While this edict removed the distinctions of 
castes, rent the fetters which bound them, allowed 
such rights as existed to be freely used, and broke down 
the barriers which separated from each other the differ- 
ent classes of society, it created no new forms of prop- 
erty. It proclaimed freedom of exchange, but did. not 
point out the manner nor provide the means therefor. 
Peasants' lands could now be held indiscriminately by 
all the citizens of the state, but they were still held 
under the old forms of tenure ; there were still two 
kinds of property. The lord w T as still owner of the 
peasant's land without the right of possessing it. The 
peasant was free, but was not master of his labors. 



106 TENURE AND TOIL. 

The legislation of 1811 was intended to remedy this 
state of affairs, and undertook to substitute allodial 
ownership for feudal tenures. 

The legislation of 1811 consisted mainly of two 
edicts, one entitled an "Edict for the Regulation of 
the Relations between the Lords of the Manor and 
their Peasants," the other, an "Edict for the Better 
Cultivation of the Land." The first is concerned with 
the new title-deeds for the peasant holders and the 
commutation of the services rendered in virtue of the 
old tenures. This had in view the adjusting of the 
equities between the lord of the manor and the peasant, 
and substituting allodial lor feudal tenures. It would 
enlarge the scope of this work to too great an extent 
to discuss in detail all its provisions, and hence we will 
pass to the Act of 1850. This latter law abrogated 
the direct dominion or suzerainty of the lords of the 
manor without compensation ; so that from the day 
of its publication all hereditary holders throughout 
Prussia, irrespective of the size of their holdings, be- 
came proprietors, subject, however, to the customary 
services and dues which, by the future provisions of 
the law, were commuted into fixed money rents, calcu- 
lated on the average money value of the services and 
dues rendered and paid during a certain number of 
years preceding. By a further provision these rent- 
charges were made compulsorily redeemable, either by 
the immediate payment of a capital equal to an eigh- 
teen-years' purchase of the rent-charge, or by a pay- 
ment of four and a half or five per cent, for fifty-six 
and a twelfth or forty-one and a twelfth years on a 



EXTINCTION OF FEUDALISM IN PRUSSIA. 107 

capital equivalent to twenty -years' purchase of the rent- 
charge. 

The law for the establishment of rent-banks pro- 
vided the machinery by which the peasants might 
redeem their property. 

The state, through the instrumentality of the rent- 
banks, constituted itself the broker between the peasants, 
by whom the rents had to be paid, and the landlords 
who received them. The bank established in each 
district advanced to the landlord in rent debentures, 
paying four-per-cent interest, a capital sum equal to 
twenty-years' purchase of the rent. The peasant, be- 
sides his ordinary rates and taxes, paid into the hands 
of the district tax-collector each month one-twelfth 
part of a rent calculated at five or four and a half per 
cent, on this capital sum, as he elected to free his prop- 
erty from encumbrance in forty-one and a twelfth or 
fifty-six and a twelfth years, the respective terms with- 
in which, at compound interest, the one or the half 
per cent, paid in addition to the four-per-cent. interest 
on the debenture, would extinguish the capital. This 
one per cent, and half per cent., when so utilized and 
hoarded by the government through these instrumen- 
talities constituted a kind of sinking-fund for the re- 
demption of the debenture or bond which the peasant 
gave to the landlord as the purchase-price of his prop- 
erty. Thus, by a wise and far-seeing policy engrafted 
by legislation upon German tenures, the peasantry 
secured their freedom, obtained an interest in the soil 
which they cultivated, and were transformed into loving 
and devoted citizens of a common fatherland. German 



108 TENURE AND TOIL. 

wisdom, through masterly statesmanship, averted the 
danger which threatened the monarchy, and saved the 
country from the horrors which were brought about by 
the French Revolution. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

DECREMENT OF FEUDALISM IN RUSSIA. 

Russian noblemen were not great landed proprie- 
tors like the feudal barons of Western Europe. The 
lands which they held were usually allotted to them 
from the crown lands, and were cultivated by their 
slaves. To those noblemen who did not own slaves, 
the czar not unfrequently awarded the yield of the 
taxes due him from the peasants of one or more vil- 
lages. The peasants of the villages, like the nobles to 
whom they paid tribute in taxes, were the servants of 
the czar. The village, not the family, was the social 
unit. Movable property alone belonged to the indi- 
vidual. The land was the common property of the 
villagers. During the reigns of the Emperors Ivan 
III. and IV. a petty nobility fashioned after the 
feudal order was created in Russia. This nobility 
consisted partly of the courtiers or nobles whom the 
czars left in possession of the yield of taxes above 
alluded to, the servants of the czar who were in part 
taken from among the villagers themselves, likewise 



DECREMENT OF FEUDALISM IN RUSSIA. 109 

endowed with the yield of taxes of one or more vil- 
lages, and the proprietors of such villages. It was not 
until the reign of Boris Godunow, the usurper, that the 
full weight of the mailed power of feudalism was felt by 
the peasants residing in villages, who uniformly hitherto 
enjoyed many political privileges. By a series of decrees 
issued by this emperor, from the year 1592 to the year 
1606, the peasant was forbidden to quit his village 
without permission and passport from the village 
authorities. Any peasant found abroad without such 
permission was taken into custody, and sent back in 
irons and punished for his disobedience. 

During the seventeenth century the condition of 
peasant and slave was alike pitiful and degrading, and 
while, as early as the year 1797, the Emperor Paul 
restored to the peasants the right of electing their vil- 
lage heads, little progress was made towards improve- 
ment in their condition until the reign of the Em- 
peror Nicholas, who in the year 1842 issued his 
ukase permitting the proprietors of private estates to 
confer, by treaties, upon their serfs the rights and 
political privileges of farmers, the government vouch- 
ing for the farmer-serfs fulfilling the conditions under- 
taken by them. The idea being to ascertain what 
form of treaties would prove the most acceptable and 
beneficial to both parties, before framing a general com- 
pulsory measure embodying the contents of a pop- 
ular form of contract. He further re-enforced the 
law interdicting the sale of peasants without land by 
forbidding the transforming of peasants, first, into 
household slaves, in which menial condition it was per- 

10 



HO TENURE AND TOIL. 

rnitted to buy and sell them, and second, forbade the 
sale of land without peasants, if by such sale the village 
acre was curtailed in such a way as to amount to less 
than twelve acres for every male villager. Finally, 
he issued regulations defining more specifically than 
before, how much labor, or how much payment in lieu 
of labor, in a variety of places, the peasant serf owed 
to his master. All measures hitherto adopted for the 
purpose of initiating and stimulating a voluntary 
abandonment of the serf-system on the part of the 
masters having proved ineffective, Alexander II. , upon 
his accession to the throne, determined to eradicate 
serfdom from agrarian legislation. In striking contrast 
with, the improvident policy pursued by the United 
States in emancipating the slaves of the South, turning 
them adrift, helpless and purposeless, abolishing their 
servile dependence upon their masters but failing to 
provide means or methods for their exercise or enjoy- 
ment of their independence, the Russian emperor 
incorporated in his proclamation abolishing serfdom 
measures dictated by wisdom and humanity, which 
enabled the disenthralled serf to make for himself a 
home in the land of his birth, and become owner of 
the soil he tilled. The legislation of Russia in 1861, 
which so happily and successfully solved this great 
problem, — at once social, industrial, and political, — 
reflects the highest credit upon Russian statesmanship. 
The Act of 1861 was based upon the assumption 
that a sudden and radical transition in the matter of 
compulsory rent payable in labor to the same payable 
in money was inadmissible even if it were possible for 



DECREMENT OF FEUDALISM IN RUSSIA. \\\ 

each of the villagers to discharge their liabilities, and 
also that the preservation intact of a numerous peas- 
antry could be best assured by an acquiescence not only 
in a fragment of coercion in general but also in a rem- 
nant of compulsory labor, the law fixing its money 
equivalent. In adjusting the relative proportions of 
labor-rent and money-rent, and the time and manner 
of working out the former and of paying the latter, 
due care was taken not to do violence to the interests 
of the lord nor infringe upon the newly-vested rights 
of the liberated serf, or render him powerless to enjoy 
the benefits of the change of his condition. The 
transition from labor-rent to money-rent was made 
optional with the peasants, with the whole community, 
or with every single family, only two years after the 
law became valid, provided they were not in arrears 
for labor-rent. The money-rent to be paid by each 
male head of the population was determined not by 
the size or fertility of the land-share he was entitled 
to so much as by its location relative to distance from 
a market, the place of exchange. 

The most important, however, of the main pro- 
visions of the Act of 1861 is that which refers to the 
right of the peasants to purchase the copyhold on 
which they are living. They are compelled to accept 
the copyhold ; but, in compensation, the proprietor of 
the estate is compelled to accept their money, if they 
are able and willing to buy either each his own share, 
dissolving the community, or together the whole of the 
grant, continuing the community. This option left to 
them has been the subject of much controversy. The 



112 TENURE AND TOIL. 

proprietors would have preferred to see the whole 
village do either the one or the other. Where the com- 
munity is not dissolved, and not inclined to purchase 
the land in common, each single peasant may yet assert 
his right of purchasing his own share, but on con- 
dition that he pays one-fifth more than the purchase- 
money otherwise would amount to. 

" Government has undertaken to assist the peasantry 
in purchasing the land by advancing, on the security 
of the ' obrok' collected by their agents, part of the 
necessary sum, amounting to four-fifths where the 
whole grant is purchased, and* to three-quarters where 
a part of it of certain size is purchased, in form of 
bonds of the Imperial Bank bearing five-per-cent. 
interest, or titles to rent, guaranteed, by government 
which afterwards are to be taken in exchange for such 
bonds of the bank. They are to be paid over at once 
to the proprietor of the estate or to his creditors. 
Only such peasants, of course, can receive the benefit 
of governmental assistance who have already turned 
the labor-rent into i obrok/ But government, always 
zealous in the interest of securing the existence of a 
numerous order of peasants, has placed another con- 
dition on their assistance. The purchase-money is 
only advanced in behalf of such peasants as consent 
to purchase the dwelling-houses and farm-yards with 
the land. This also will tend to lessen the number 
of cases — apprehended by the proprietors — of a part 
of the peasants in a village purchasing the houses and 
farm-yards with the land, and a part without it." 



BOOK III. 

THE RIGHT OF PROPERTY AND THE STABILITY 
OF TENURES. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE EIGHT OF PROPERTY DEFINED. 

The right of property is not an absolute right which 
belongs to man as a natural being but a relative and 
restricted right, "which arises from his social relations. 
Austin, treating of jus in rem (ownership) uses the 
terms " ownership" or " property" as synonymous, and, 
referring to this term, he says that it is of such com- 
plex or various meaning that he does not undertake to 
accurately define it, but for his present purpose gives 
the following definition : " The right to use or deal 
with some given subject in a manner and to an extent 
which though not unlimited is indefinite." After dis- 
cussing the subject as thus defined, he says, " Ownership 
or property is therefore a species of jus in rem. It is 
a right residing in a person, over or to a person or 
thing and availing against other persons universally or 
generally." It will be perceived that this definition, 
as the author concedes, does not fully answer the pur- 
pose even in a technical sense, and it would but in- 
h 10* H3 



114 TENURE AND TOIL. 

crease the difficulty to undertake to give a definition 
against which no objection can be urged. For all 
practical purposes, however, I may say that the right 
of property is a right which belongs to man as a mem- 
ber of society, and correlative to it, is the right in 
every man to use and enjoy that which is his, in such 
manner as he pleases, so that in the use and enjoyment 
thereof he does nothing that is hurtful to himself or 
to another. This right of property is a private right, 
a natural right, and a legal right. It is a private right 
because confined to the owner; it is a natural right 
because every member of society may enjoy it, and it 
is a legal right because it grows out of the common 
compact, and is sanctioned by universal usage at all 
times among all civilized nations and peoples. 

Dr. Wm. Paley, in his "Moral and Political Phi- 
losophy," speaking of property rights, very aptly says 
that " The real foundation of our right is the law of 
the land. It is the intention of God that the produce 
of the earth be applied to the use of man. This in- 
tention cannot be fulfilled without establishing prop- 
erty ; it is consistent therefore with his will that prop- 
erty be established. The land cannot be divided into 
separate property without leaving it to the law of the 
country to regulate that division. It is consistent 
therefore with the same will that the law should reg- 
ulate the division, and, consequently, l consistent with 
the will of God/ or ' right/ that I should possess 
that share which these regulations assign me. 

" By whatever circuitous train of reasoning you at- 
tempt to derive this right, it must terminate at last in 



THE RIGHT OF PROPERTY DEFINED. H5 

the will of God. The straightest, therefore, and short- 
est way of arriving at his will, is the best. 

" Hence it appears that my right to an estate does 
not at all depend upon the manner or justice of the 
original acquisition, nor upon the justice of each sub- 
sequent change of possession. It is not, for instance, 
the less, nor ought it to be impeached, because the 
estate was taken possession of at first by a family of 
aboriginal Britons, who happened to be stronger than 
their neighbors ; nor because the British possessor was 
turned out by a Roman, or the Roman by a Saxon 
invader; nor because it was seized without color of 
right or reason, by a follower of the Norman adven- 
turer, from whom, after many interruptions of fraud 
and violence, it has at length devolved to me. 

" Nor does the owner's right depend upon the ex- 
pediency of the law which gives it to him. On one 
side of a brook an estate descends to the eldest son, 
on the other side to all the children alike. The right 
of the claimants under both laws of inheritance is 
equal, though the expediency of such opposite rules 
must necessarily be different." 

In chapter ii., Book VI., " Progress and Poverty," 
Henry George says : 

" To extirpate poverty, to make wages what justice 
commands, they should be the full earnings of the 
laborer, we must therefore substitute for the individual 
ownership of land a common ownership. Nothing 
else will go to the cause of the evil, — in nothing else 
is there the slightest hope. 

" This, then, is the remedy for the unjust and un- 



\\ Q TENURE AND TOIL. 

equal distribution of wealth apparent in modern civili- 
zation, and for all the evils which flow from it. We 
must make land common property." 

This is the panacea which George would offer for all 
our social and political woes. " We have reached this 
conclusion," he says, " by an examination in which 
every step has been proved and secured. In the chain 
of reasoning no link is wanting and no link is weak. 
Deduction and induction have brought us to the same 
truth, — that the unequal ownership of land necessitates 
the unequal distribution of wealth." Evidently the 
links in the chain of reasoning by which George 
reached his conclusion were composed of sand and 
fashioned by the ocean's waves. Before establishing 
the truth by induction that the unequal ownership of 
land necessitates the unequal distribution of wealth, he 
infers by deduction that the remedy for this " and for 
all the evils which flow from it" is " to make land 
common property." The assumption that unequal 
distribution of land is of itself the cause of these 
evils is untrue, and any deduction drawn or conclusion 
reached from such an assumption must necessarily be 
false. What has the unequal distribution of land to 
do with stock-, grain-, and provision-corners which de- 
moralize trade and bankrupt individuals; with rail- 
road pools which rob both producer and consumer ; 
with sugar trusts, coffee trusts, oil trusts, and coal 
trusts which filch the last penny from the pocket of 
the workman every Saturday night? What has it to 
do with the monstrous iniquity of the law which de- 
prives the workman, who is injured through defective 



THE RIGHT OF PROPERTY DEFINED. H7 

machinery or who is not paid his wages, of a speedy 
remedy ? And what has it to do with a thousand 
other wrongs which it is unnecessary here to mention. 
George wields such a facile pen that his writings are 
well calculated to decoy and ensnare those who have 
little practical knowledge of wordly affairs, or who 
do not penetrate beneath the surface to discover and 
detect his fallacious reasoning. That the monopoly 
and combination of wealth (and by wealth I mean 
cash, bonds, stocks, real and personal property), and 
the inefficiency of the law to prevent this monopoly 
and combination, are the real causes of the discontent 
and unrest of the toiling millions, every man who in- 
vestigates and thinks must admit. But as these views 
will be found more fully expressed in subsequent chap- 
ters of this volume, I will not enlarge upon them here, 
further than to assert that the right of property is best 
regulated and enjoyed when each individual owns, con- 
trols, and possesses that which is his absolutely and of 
right. That this mode of owning and enjoying prop- 
erty is more advantageous to the individual, and more 
beneficial to society because promotive of thrift, prog- 
ress, and prosperity, is established by the testimony of 
men whose opinions ought to have great weight with 
every thoughtful man. 



118 TENURE AND TOIL. 



CHAPTER II. 

HOW THIS EIGHT IS BEST REGULATED AND 
ENJOYED. 

Emile de Laveleye, whose researches into the his- 
tory of institutions and the mode of enjoying property, 
comprehending nearly every country of the world, al- 
most unconsciously, as it were, draws the line of de- 
marcation in the progress of civilization where com- 
munity property ends and individual property begins ; 
demonstrating the advantages of the latter mode of en- 
joyment over the former. Any argument advanced or 
conclusions drawn by him to the contrary are hardly 
sustained by the evidence which he produces. The 
social development and progress which mark the evo- 
lutions in the form of landed property, so minutely and 
ably presented in his valuable work on the "Origin 
of Property," furnish indubitable evidence of the 
surperior advantages of individual ownership over 
communal property. Speaking of the inroads which 
this social development are producing in Russia, he says : 

" Since the emancipation the old patriarchal family 
has tended to fall asunder. The sentiment of individ- 
ual independence is weakening and destroying it. The 
young people no longer obey the ' ancient.' The 
women quarrel about the task they have to perform. 
The married son longs to have his own dwelling. He 
can claim his share of the land ; and, as the Russian 



HOW THIS BIGHT IS BEST BEGULATED. H 9 

peasant soon builds himself a house of wood which he 
shapes, axe in hand, with marvellous facility, each 
couple sets up a separate establishment for itself. . . . 

" How marked is the contrast between the Russian 
and the American ! The latter, eager for change and 
action, athirst for gain, always discontented with his 
position, always in search of novelty, freed from 
parental authority in his earliest years, accustomed to 
count on no one but himself and to obey nothing but 
the law, which he has himself helped to make, is a 
finished type of individualism." 

After describing the characteristics and family life 
of the communities among the southern Slavs he 
says : 

" The flourishing appearance of Bulgaria shows de- 
cisively that the system is not antagonistic to good cul- 
tivation. And yet this organization, in spite of its 
many advantages, is falling to ruin, and disappearing 
wherever it comes in contact with modern ideas. The 
reason is that these institutions are suited to the station- 
ary condition of a primitive age; but cannot easily 
withstand the conditions of a state of society in which 
men are striving to improve their own lot as well as 
the political and social organization under which they 
live. I know not whether the nations who have lived 
tranquilly under the shelter of these patriarchal insti- 
tutions will ever arrive at a happier or more brilliant 
destiny; but this much appears inevitable, that they 
will desire, like Adam in ' Paradise Lost/ to enter on 
a new career, and to taste the charm of independent 
life despite its perils and responsibilities." 



120 TENURE AND TOIL. 

M. de Sismondi, comparing the conditions of tenant 
farmers and peasant proprietors, says : 

" Wherever we find peasant proprietorship we also 
find comfort, security, confidence in the future, and 
independence, which assures at once happiness and 
virtue." 

In a carefully-prepared treatise on Flemish hus- 
bandry, in the " Farmers' Series of the Society for the 
Diffusion of Useful Knowledge," the writer states that 
the Flemish agriculturists seem to want nothing but a 
space to work upon. " It is highly interesting," he 
says, " to follow, step by step, the progress of improve- 
ment. Here you see a cottage and rude cow-shed 
erected on a spot of the most unpromising aspect, the 
loose white sand blown into irregular mounds is only 
kept together by the roots of the heath; a small spot 
only is levelled and surrounded by a ditch ; part of this 
is covered with young broom, part is planted with po- 
tatoes, and, perhaps, a small patch of diminutive clover 
may show itself; and this is the nucleus from which in 
a few years, a little farm will spread around. If there 
is no manure at hand, the only thing that can be sown, 
on pure sand, at first, is broom ; this grows in the most 
barren soils ; in three years it is fit to cut, and produces 
some return in fagots for the bakers and brickmakers. 
The leaves which have fallen have somewhat enriched 
the soil, and the fibres of the roots have given a certain 
degree of compactness. It may now be ploughed and 
sown with buckwheat, or even with rye without manure. 
By the time this is reaped, some manure may have col- 
lected, and a regular course of cropping may begin." 



HOW THIS RIGHT IS BEST REGULATED. 121 

Step by step the improvement goes on, the soil under- 
goes a complete change ; it becomes mellow and reten- 
tive of moisture, and is enriched by the decomposition 
of vegetable matter, and made fertile by the hand of 
industry, and patient and intelligent husbandry. The 
people labor constantly and industriously, and wait 
patiently for returns, because the land which they cul- 
tivate belongs to them. " The magic of property turns 
sand into gold." 

Joseph Kay, A.M., of Cambridge University, speak- 
ing of the division of land in foreign countries, refer- 
ring to Germany, says : " In Saxony it is a notorious 
fact, that during the last thirty years, and since the 
peasants became the proprietors of the land, there has 
been a rapid and continual improvement in the con- 
dition of the houses, in the manner of living, in the 
dress of the peasant, and particularly in the culture of 
land. The peasants endeavor to outstrip one another 
in the quantity and quality of the produce, in the prep- 
aration of the ground, and in the general cultivation 
of their respective portions. All the little proprietors 
are eager to find out how to farm so as to produce the 
greatest results; they diligently seek after improve- 
ments; they send their children to the agricultural 
schools in order to fit them to assist their fathers, and 
each proprietor soon adopts a new improvement intro- 
duced by any of his neighbors." 

Mr. Howitt, writing on the Rural and Domestic 
Life of Germany, says : " The peasants are the great 
and ever-present objects of country life. They are the 
great population of the country, because they them- 

V 11 



122 TENURE AND TOIL. 

selves are the possessors. This country is, in fact, for 
the most part, in the hands of the people. It is par- 
celled out among the multitude, — the peasants are not, 
as with us, for the most part, totally cut off from prop- 
erty in the soil they cultivate, totally dependent on 
labor afforded by others, — they are themselves the pro- 
prietors. It is, perhaps, from this cause that they are 
probably the most industrious peasantry in the world. 
They labor busily, early and late, because they find that 
they are laboring for themselves. The English peasant 
is so cut off from the idea of property that he comes 
habitually to look upon it as a thing from which he is 
warned by the laws of the large proprietors, and be- 
comes, in consequence, spiritless, purposeless. The 
German farmer, on the contrary, looks on the country 
as made for him and his fellow-men. He feels himself 
a man ; he has a stake in the country, as good as that 
of the bulk of his neighbors ; no man can threaten 
him with ejectment or the work-house, as long as he is 
active and economical ; he walks, therefore, with a bold 
step ; he looks you in the face with the air of a free 
man, but of a respectful air." 



CHAPTER III. 

THE SUBJECT CONTINUED. 



St. Thomas Aquinas, the great doctor and theolo- 
gian of the Roman Catholic Church, says : " It is 
lawful that man should possess things as his own. 



THE SUBJECT CONTINUED. 123 

For this is necessary to human life for three reasons : 
First, because every one is more solicitous to procure 
what belongs exclusively to himself than that which 
is common to all or many, since each one, evading 
work, leaves to another what is the business of all, as 
it happens where there is a number of servants. 
Besides, there will be better order in the management 
of human affairs if to each citizen is laid the burden 
and care of acquiring certain things ; moreover, there 
would be confusion if each one promiscuously pro- 
cured every kind of thing. Thirdly, the community 
is kept in greater peace while each one is satisfied with 
his own property. Hence we see that, among those 
who possess something in common and indi visibly, 
contentions arise more frequently." 

The master-spirit of Catholicity in England, Cardi- 
nal Manning, in his recent admirable exposition of 
the Law of Nature, Divine and Supreme, regarding 
the rights of the poor, says : 

" By the law of nature all men have a common right 
to the use of things which were created for them and 
for their sustenance. 

" But this common right does not exclude the posses- 
sion of anything which becomes proper to each. The 
common right is by natural law, the right of property 
is by human and positive law, and the positive law of 
property is expedient for three reasons : (1) What is 
our own is more carefully used than what is common. 
(2) Human affairs are better ordered by recognized 
private rights. (3) Human society is more peaceful 
when each has his own protected by the law of justice. 



124 TENURE AND TOIL. 

" Theft is therefore always a sin, — for two reasons : 
(1) It is contrary to justice. (2) It is committed 
either by stealth or by violence. 

"But the human and positive law cannot derogate 
from the natural and Divine law. According to the 
Divine law all things are ordained to sustain the life 
of man, and, therefore, the division and appropriation 
of things cannot hinder the sustenance of man in case 
of necessity. Therefore the possessions of those who 
have food superabundantly are due by the natural law 
for the sustenance of the poor. . . . This doctrine lies 
at the foundation of the positive law of property in all 
Christendom. It exists as an unwritten law in all Cath- 
olic countries. . . . The obligation to feed the hungry 
springs from the natural right of every man to life, 
and to the food necessary for the sustenance of life. 
So strict is this natural right that it prevails over all 
positive laws of property. Necessity has no law, and 
a starving man has a natural right to his neighbor's 
meal. I am afraid that those who speak so confi- 
dently about rights, obligations, and laws have not 
studied, or have forgotten, the first principles of all 
human positive law. If the law of property did not 
rest upon a natural right it could not long exist. . . . 
Before the natural right to live all human laws must 
give way." 

Aristotle, in his efforts to find what is the best gov- 
ernment, briefly outlines the first principles of man's 
social nature, and of domestic life in its various rela- 
tions, showing how these relations naturally combine 
into that form of social existence which is called a 



THE SUBJECT CONTINUED. 125 

state, and after demonstrating that, the community of 
women and children, as advocated by Socrates and 
Plato, is not beneficial to the state, speaking of the 
community of property, says : 

" We proceed next to consider, as to property, in 
what way it should be regulated among those who are 
to live under a state formed after the most perfect 
mode of government, whether it should be common 
or not; I mean, whether it is better (although these 
should be held separate, as is now the case every- 
where), that not only the possessions but also the 
produce of them should be in common ; or that the 
soil should belong to a particular owner, but that its 
produce should be brought together and used as one 
common stock, as some nations at present do ; or, on 
the contrary, that the soil should be common and be 
cultivated in common, while the produce is divided 
among individuals for their special use, as is said 
to be the practice among some of the barbarians ; or 
whether both the soil and the fruit should be in 
common? When the husbandman and the citizen 
are distinct, there is another and easier method ; but 
when they each labor at their possessions for them- 
selves, this may occasion several difficulties ; for if 
there be not an equal proportion between their labor 
and what they consume, those who labor hard and 
have but a small proportion of the produce, will of 
necessity complain against those who take a large 
share and do but little labor. Upon the whole, it is 
difficult to live together as a community, and thus to 
have all things that man can possess in common, es- 

11* 



226 TENURE AND TOIL. 

pecially this is the case with respect to such property. 
This is evident from the partnerships of those who go 
out to settle a colony; for nearly all of them have dis- 
putes with each other upon the most common matters, 
and come to blows upon trifles : we find, too, that we 
oftenest disagree with those slaves who are generally 
employed in the common offices of a family. A com- 
munity of property, then, has these and other incon- 
veniences attending it : but the manner of life which is 
now established, more particularly when embellished 
with good morals and a system of upright laws, is far 
superior to it, for it will embrace the advantages of both ; 
by 'both 7 we mean, the advantage arising from prop- 
erties being common, and from being divided also ; 
for in some respects it ought to be common, but upon 
the whole private. For the fact that every man's 
attention is employed on his own particular concerns 
will prevent mutual complaints; and property will 
increase as each person labors to improve his own 
private property ; and it will then happen that, from 
a principle of virtue, they will perform good offices 
to each other, according to the proverb, ' All things 
are common among friends/ . . . 

"This system of polity does, indeed, recommend 
itself by its good appearance, and specious pretences to 
humanity; and the man who hears it proposed will re- 
ceive it gladly, concluding that there will be a wonder- 
ful bond of friendship between all its members, par- 
ticularly when any one censures the evils which are now 
to be found in society, as arising from property not being 
common; as, for example, the disputes which happen be- 



THE SUBJECT CONTINUED. 127 

tween man and man, upon their contracts with each other ; 
the judgments passed to punish perjury, and the flatter- 
ing of the rich ; none of which arise from properties 
being private, but from the corruption of mankind. For 
we see those who live in one community and have all 
things in common, disputing with each other oftener 
than those who have their property separate ; but we 
observe fewer instances of strife, because of the very 
small number of those who have property in common 
compared with those where it is appropriated. It is 
also but right to mention not only the evils from which 
they who share property in common will be preserved, 
but also the advantages which they will lose, for, viewed 
as a whole, this manner of life will be found imprac- 
ticable. 

" We must suppose, then, that the error of Socrates 
arose from the fact that his first principle was false; 
for we admit that both a family and a state ought to be 
one in some particulars, but not entirely so, for there is 
a point beyond which, if a state proceeds towards one- 
ness, it will be no longer a state." 

In speaking of the manners and customs of the Ger- 
mans, Tacitus says : " To the rest of the Germans we 
display camps and legions, but to the Hermundurians 
we grant the exclusive privilege of seeing our houses 
and our elegant villas. They behold the splendor of 
the Romans, but without avarice or a wish to enjoy it." 
Rome had her houses and elegant villas when the Ger- 
mans " neither knew the use of mortar nor of tiles. 
They built with rude materials, regardless of beauty, 
order, and proportion." Rome was civilized, — Ger- 



128 TENURE AND TOIL. 

many barbarian. The Romans owned houses, built 
imperial highways, engaged in commerce, — the Germans 
lived in communities, shifting from place to place, " dis- 
persed up and down as a grove, a meadow, or a fountain 
happened to invite." These distinctions in the con- 
ditions of the social life of the peoples are not peculiar 
to Rome and Germany. The same may be said of 
Rome and Britain in the days of Csesar, and generally 
wherever it is possible to place civilization and progress 
side by side with a nation which has not emerged from 
barbarism, we meet with similar contrasts. 



CHAPTER IV. 

EIGHTS, VESTED AND PROSPECTIVE. 

The right of property embraces not only the ex- 
clusive privilege to use and enjoy the thing owned, but 
also the exclusive power to sell, transfer, and dispose 
of the same upon such terms, at such times, and to 
such persons as may be agreeable to the owner, pro- 
vided that in so doing he violates none of the laws or 
customs established by the society of which he is a 
member, and to which he is indebted for the protection, 
preservation, and enjoyment of that which is his. 
Nor does the right of property end here. There are 
rights beyond these which are as absolutely his, and 
which are as sacred and inviolable as those already 



RIGHTS, VESTED AND PROSPECTIVE. 129 

mentioned. The right to which I now refer follows as 
the direct and necessary consequence of the law or 
custom upon which all other rights are based. It fol- 
lows as certainly and logically as effect follows cause. 

So long as society exists for the protection, preserva- 
tion, and perpetuation of personal liberty, of personal 
security, and of the inviolability of private property, a 
man ought not only to be protected in his right to 
things tangible and possessory, but should also be pro- 
tected in his just expectations as to things intangible, 
such as the fruits of his labors which become valuable 
rights of property. For example, if I plant a vine- 
yard, the vines which I plant are things tangible and 
possessory, they are vested rights of property of which 
I cannot be deprived under the law without just com- 
pensation. While my vines have ripened into a vested 
and possessory right of property, they are of no real 
present value until vintage, no more than the wheat 
which I sow is of any real present value until har- 
vest. But I may as justly and as reasonably expect 
my vines to yield fruit, and that I will gather the 
vintage, as I have to expect my wheat to grow and 
that I will reap the harvest. When I planted my 
vineyard, and during all the years that I trimmed and 
tended my vines, it was just as lawful for me to expect 
that I might gather my grapes and convert them into 
wine, as it was for me to expect that I might reap my 
wheat and convert it into flour. The yield of my 
vineyard is but the reward of my skill and labor, just 
the same as the yield of my wheat-field. It was just 
as harmless and as innocent and as lawful for me to 



130 TENURE AND TOIL. 

plant rny vineyard and trim the vines as it was for me 
to sow my wheat-field and gather the harvest.* It 
was just as lawful for me to make wine from grapes, 
when I planted and tended my vineyard, as it was to 
convert wheat into flour. The vines which I planted 
were as surely my property, and as securely protected 
under the law, as the growing wheat. In fact, the laws 
and customs of the society, of which I was a member, 
encouraged the cultivation of the vine, and, relying 
upon the faith of these laws and customs, I expended 
my labor in its cultivation. This labor was my cap- 
ital, my property, my all. The law declared in no 
uncertain terms that my property could not be taken 
for public purposes without just compensation. This 
was the solemn assurance held out to me, and upon the 
faith of which I expended my labor. As vintage- 
time drew near, and when about to reap the reward of 
my labor, — when ray j ust expectations with regard to 
my rights of property were about to be realized, — the 
society of which I was a member, if not in the letter 
in the spirit, violated the solemn assurance which it 
held out to me under the law, for although it did not 
actually take from me my property, it did that which 
was virtually the same. It passed a law which de- 
prived me of the reward of my labor, — a law which 

* M. de Lavergne, in a letter to Cliffe Leslie, in 1869, written 
from Toulouse, France, says : " You could not believe what wealth 
the cultivation of the vine has spread through that country, and the 
peasantry have gotten no small share of it. The market price of 
land has quadrupled in ten years." So that the cultivation of the 
vine is not only a legitimate hut a profitable rural industry. 



RIGHTS, VESTED AND PROSPECTIVE. 131 

declared the manufacture or sale of wine from grapes 
unlawful. My vineyard was so far removed from 
market that my grapes could not be sold or utilized 
for any purpose but for the manufacture of wine. In 
consequence of this unjust law my grapes were left to 
wither on the stem, my vineyard was consigned to 
waste, and thereby my labor was robbed of its just 
reward. I appealed to the law through the regularly 
constituted tribunals for redress, but was answered that 
my grapes were not actually taken, that, as they might 
be used for any purpose other than the only purpose 
for which, under the circumstances, they could be used, 
I was not entitled to compensation. That the State 
could not in fact take my property without making 
just compensation therefor, but that it might play dog 
in the manger, and in this way deprive me of its use. 
And this process of reasoning, of legal subterfuge 
and of judicial robbery, is based upon the theory that 
individual rights must yield and be set aside whenever 
the public good requires that such a sacrifice shall be 
made. If by this process of reasoning the property 
of any individual may be destroyed, where is the line 
to be drawn? Upon the same theory and with as 
much semblance of justice I may be compelled to give 
up my fallow and pasturage, my unimproved and un- 
. occupied city lots, to any one who will plough and sow 
the one, or improve and occupy the other, whenever it 
shall be decreed that it is necessary for the public good, 
provided I am not absolutely deprived of my naked 
legal title. It may as plausibly be said that in author- 
izing a farmer to plough and sow my fallow and pas- 



132 TENURE AND TOIL. 

turage, or a manufacturer or merchant to improve and 
occupy my city lot, I am not deprived of my property 
but of its use only, as to say that I am not deprived 
of my vintage. Legislative sophistry and judicial 
legerdemain cannot convince the common mind that 
this system of robbery is more consonant with the 
principles of natural justice than that which is advo- 
cated by Henry George and his followers. Indeed, 
Georgeism is the more commendable because to him 
what is equal seems just, and in founding his republic 
individual rights would be sacrificed only upon the 
theory of equality. Georgeism has this merit at least 
to commend it, that the individual who gives up his 
property for the common good may hope to receive 
back an equal proportion of his own in the general 
distribution as one of the community, while the pro- 
hibitory liquor laws recently passed in Kansas and 
Iowa deprive individuals of their property without 
even distributing it among the community, or awarding 
to the owners the poor privilege of participating in 
the benefits which would arise from its general dis- 
tribution. Men in those States invested hundreds of 
thousands of dollars in constructing beer-cellars and 
breweries under the sanction of law, and with the as- 
surance held out to them that private property should 
not be taken for the public use without just compensa- 
tion. Upon the security of these properties large 
sums of money were advanced and credit given be- 
cause it was just as innocent, just as harmless, and just 
as lawful to build a beer-cellar and erect a brewery as it 
was to settle upon the prairie and pre-empt a homestead. 



SUBVERSION OF LAW IS INVASION OF RIGHT. \^ 

As the law offered to the lender and borrower full 
assurance that capital invested in this kind of property 
would be protected, it was the solemn duty of the State 
to keep its faith with those who invested their capital 
in, and gave credit upon, this kind of security. There 
is no principle of natural justice which exempts a State 
from fulfilling its moral and legal obligations any more 
than an individual. The property in these beer-cellars 
and breweries is of no more real value, of no more 
utility for any purpose, other than that for which they 
were built and constructed, than are the hollow caves 
which yawn back the roar of the dashing waves along 
the sea-shore. Yet, because the law did not actually 
take from its owner his naked legal title, because the 
property in them may be used for some purpose, — that 
is, the stone and mortar and wood, of which they are 
constructed, may be carted off or shipped to some 
other point and there converted into use, — there has not 
been a taking within the meaning of the fundamental 
law, and, therefore, the owners are not entitled to com- 
pensation. 



CHAPTER Y. 

SUBVERSION OF LAW IS INVASION OF EIGHT. 

A nation may outlive civil commotion, rebellion, and 
even anarchy, provided the body politic has not become 
so corrupt as to be unable to distinguish between the first 

12 



134 TENURE AND TOIL. 

principles of right and wrong, of justice and injustice. 
I admit, as Aristotle says, that all men have some 
natural inclination to justice, " but they proceed therein 
only to a certain degree, nor can they universally point 
out what is absolutely just." But the universal voice 
of mankind will unite in one acclaim in saying, that if 
I am encourged by society (and by society I mean the 
State) to invest money in a certain kind of property, 
or to build up a certain industry at a time when the 
fundamental law of that society declares my right of 
property therein inviolable, and thereafter that society 
should change the law so as to deprive me of the use of 
my property, and render it valueless to me, it should 
make compensation for the injury done. This would 
be but natural justice, anything less is flagrant injustice. 
If the public safety or the public morals require the 
discontinuance of any business or manufacture, the 
legislature of a State has the undoubted right to pro- 
vide for its discontinuance, but where this business or 
manufacture grew into vested rights of property under 
the sanction of the law and under the assurance of the 
public policy of the State, its discontinuance can only 
be justly and legally commanded upon making due 
compensation for the loss which necessarily and inevi- 
tably will accrue to the individual.* I designed writ- 



* Edmund Burke, the statesman, legislator, and philosopher, 
in proposing " a plan of reform in the constitution of several 
parts of the public economy," in the British House of Commons, 
speaking of the uneasiness of the people in regard to the abuse 
of sinecures, said : " I think with- the public, that the profits of 
these places are grown enormously ; the magnitude of those 



SUBVERSION OF LAW IS INVASION OF RIGHT. 135 

ing this book with a view of combating communistic 
doctrine, but I am met at the threshold with the 
anomaly of legislative acts and judicial decrees which, 
if sound law, are more dangerous to society, because 
evincing a corrupt state of public morals, than all the 
wild vaporings of the wildest anarchists from the begin- 
ning of the French Revolution down to the execution of 

profits, and the nature of them, hoth call for reformation. The 
nature of their profits which grow out of the public distress is 
itself invidious and grievous. But I fear that reform cannot be 
immediate. I find myself under a restriction. These places, 
and others of the same kind, which are held for life, have been 
considered as property. They have been given as a provision 
for children, they have been the subject of family settlements; 
they have been the security of creditors. If the barriers of law 
should be broken down, upon ideas of convenience, even of 
public convenience, we shall have no longer anything certain 
among us. If the discretion of power is once let loose upon pro- 
perty, we can be at no loss to determine whose power, and what 
discretion it is that will prevail at last. It would be wise to attend 
upon the order of things, and not attempt to outrun the slow, but 
smooth and even course of nature. There are occasions, I admit, 
of public necessity, so vast, so clear, so evident, that they super- 
sede all laws. Law, being only made for the benefit of the com- 
munity, cannot in any one of its parts resist a demand which may 
comprehend the total of the public interest. To be sure, no law 
can set itself up against the cause and reason of all law. But 
such a case very rarely happens, and this most certainly is not 
such a case. The mere time of the reform is by no means worth 
the sacrifice of a principle of law. Individuals pass like shadows, 
but the commonwealth is fixed and stable. The difference, 
therefore, of to-day and to-morrow, which to private people is 
immense, to the State is nothing. At any rate it is better, 
if possible, to reconcile our economy with our laws than to set 
them at variance; a quarrel which in the end must be destruc- 
tive of both." 



136 TENURE AND TOIL. 

August Spies and his associates. If the acts and deci- 
sions already alluded to be law, there is no legal se- 
curity, there is no constitutional safeguard for the pro- 
tection of individual rights and the inviolability of 
private property which may not be overthrown, and 
trampled upon by State legislation. 

In one of the latest decisions prepared by that able 
jurist, Mr. Justice Cooley, when on the Supreme bench 
of the State of Michigan he took occasion to say : 
" Personally, I have little care how this case shall be 
decided. But it seems to me that in constitutional 
questions the court is drifting to this position : that 
these statutes are constitutional which suit us, and those 
are void which do not." This severe comment upon 
judicial morals, I fear, is but too true. 

Ordinarily it is of little consequence to society how 
the cause of any particular individual may be decided 
when there is no principle involved other than the 
question with whom the merits of the case lie ; but the 
recent acts of Iowa and Kansas, and the decisions of 
the courts with reference thereto, involve a principle 
of no little importance to the whole American people, 
and that is, whether the language employed in the 
fourteenth amendment to the constitution means what 
it says, or is but a mere idle play of words. No 
man who observes the assaults upon corporate property 
and encroachments upon vested rights occurring almost 
daily in crowded cities and legislative halls can but 
realize that between the conspiracies of the commune and 
the fanaticism of well-meaning but ill-guided zealots, 
our institutions are not only threatened, but are en- 



SUBVERSION OF LAW IS INVASION OF RIGHT. J 37 

during a crucial test. Judges and statesmen ought not 
to pause too long, but should wisely contemplate and 
calmly consider the limits within which every invasion 
of property and personal rights, under whatever guise, 
should be confined. 

Every lawyer who has given thought to the subject 
of legislation for the suppression of intemperance, and 
who has carefully examined and analyzed the decisions 
of courts/will admit that more uncertainty and doubt 
have crept into the administration of the law through 
hasty and ill-guarded dicta and decisions bearing upon 
this class of statutory crimes than through all other 
agencies. It is not my purpose to assail the motive 
of courts that would give sanction to laws of this 
nature, for, whatever views I may entertain on the 
subject, I agree with the author of the " Rights of 
Man/' that " it is better to obey a bad law, making 
use at the same time of every argument to show its 
errors and procure its repeal, than to forcibly violate 
it, because the precedent of breaking a bad law might 
weaken the force and lead to a discretionary violation 
of those which are good." From this text courts and 
judges may learn salutary lessons. To ascertain what 
the law is and to decide whether or not it conflicts with 
the constitution is the alpha and omega, the beginning 
and the end, of a judge's duty. A penal statute of 
doubtful meaning ought always to be construed in 
favor of the liberty of the citizen rather than against 
it, and when a law falls within the ban of the con- 
stitution, courts ought to place their seal of condem- 
nation upon it regardless of their personal feelings, 

12* 



138 TENURE AND TOIL. 

predilections, or prejudices. In this way only can 
courts uphold the dignity and maintain the supremacy 
of the law under the constitution. Under our politi- 
cal system, we ignore the " divine right" of kings and 
the "infallibility" of parliament, — the court alone is 
the final arbiter between the citizen and the State, and 
the law its " golden met-wand and measure." In 
war and in peace, at all times and under all circum- 
stances, our courts should be ready to guard and 
protect the rights and liberties of the citizen under 
the constitution. At their bidding legislative enact- 
ments made in contravention of the constitution are 
held inoperative and void. Executive decrees, func- 
tions, and prerogatives exercised and performed by the 
President, whether in the capacity of civil magistrate 
or as commander-in-chief of the land and naval forces 
of the nation, when not sanctioned by that instrument, 
are stayed, modified, or annulled. From the moment, 
therefore, that any judge who is called upon to decide 
a question involving the rights or liberties of the 
citizen permits himself to be swayed by personal preju- 
dices, however honest, our constitutional guarantees are 
as nothing, and the liberties of the people are at an 
end. It is aptly said by the learned historian who 
wrote " The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" 
that " the principles of a free constitution are irrecover- 
ably lost when the legislative power is dominated by 
the executive." And, with equal force may it be said 
that when a man is elected to fill a judicial position 
because of his predilections in favor of a particular 
law, or, when he is set aside and defeated for the 



SECURITY UNDER THE CONSTITUTION. 139 

office because he has the manhood to do right, the 
boast of freedom under a written constitution becomes 
a " tinkling cymbal," the cant of hypocrites, and sooner 
or later, in such case, the structure of our institutions 
must fall with crushing force upon the heads of those 
who are slowly but surely weakening and impairing 
its foundations. If judges, who are the creatures of 
the people, are to be swayed by the clamor of the 
majority and to hold that those statutes are constitu- 
tional which suit them, and those void which do not, 
what difference can there be in this particular between 
a republican form of government under a written 
constitution and an absolute monarchy, such as that 
despicable despot, James the First of England, sought 
to establish? 



CHAPTER VI. 

SECURITY UNDER THE CONSTITUTION. 

The fifth amendment to the Constitution of the 
United States provides that " no person shall be held 
to answer for a capital or otherwise infamous crime, 
unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand 
jury. . . . nor shall any person be subject, for the 
same offence, to be twice put in jeopardy of life or 
limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to 
be a witness against himself; nor be deprived of life, 
liberty, or property, without due process of law ; nor 



140 TENURE AND TOIL. 

shall private property be taken for public use without 
just compensation." But, notwithstanding this con- 
stitutional guarantee of personal rights and of private 
property, the State might deprive its own citizen, or 
any person within its jurisdiction, of life, liberty or 
property in any mode or by any form of law enacted 
by its legislature and sanctioned by its courts, and, 
however tyrannical, cruel and unusual the punishment, 
or unjust the decree which deprived him of his life 
or liberty or despoiled him of his property, he was 
without the protection of the Federal Constitution. 

" Congress shall make no law respecting an estab- 
lishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise 
thereof/ 7 is the language of the first article of the 
constitution ; and broad and beneficent as this language 
may seem, if Utah were a member of the sisterhood of 
States his polygamic majesty, by edict from his temple 
or by rescript of his legislature, might compel every 
citizen within the jurisdictional limits of- the State to 
bow in reverence before the shrine of Mormonism and 
lay yearly tithe at the foot of a Mormon altar. Can 
any man who fought to uphold the Union and sustain 
the supremacy of the nation be convinced that all the 
lives which were sacrificed and all the treasure which 
was expended to establish a principle and consummate 
a fact are to go for naught, and that, after all, he is but 
the serf of a provincial baron instead of a proud 
citizen of the United States under the protection of 
the Constitution ? " If I were to ask you, gentlemen 
of the jury," said Erskine in one of his noted speeches 
in defence of liberty, " what is the choicest fruit that 



SECURITY UNDER THE CONSTITUTION. 141 

grows upon the tree of English liberty, you would 
answer, security under the law. If I were to ask the 
whole people of England, the return they look for at 
the hands of government, for the burdens under which 
they bend to support it, I should still be answered, 
security under the law; or, in other words, an im- 
partial administration of justice." There is no such 
thing as security under the law if the legislature can, 
without compensation, destroy vested rights of property 
acquired under the existing law. Judicial refinements 
may strip constitutional guarantees of their common 
sense and every-day meaning, may tax the art of 
sophistry, and throw around their decisions a glamour 
of pedantry, but, after all, the fact remains indelible, 
unchanged, and unchangeable that the individual has 
been wrongfully deprived of that which was legally 
and rightfully his. 

When rights are acquired by the citizen under the 
existing law, there is no authority vested in any branch of 
the government to take them away without just com- 
pensation.* But where they are held contrary to the 

* I agree with the Supreme Court of the United States in the 
Mugler case (123 U. S., 623), that the right of every citizen to 
manufacture intoxicating liquors for his own use, or as a bever- 
age, " does not inhere in citizenship." Indeed, I go further, and 
hold it to be the law that every member of society is bound by 
the rules of civil conduct prescribed for the guidance, govern- 
ment, and well-being of all, and when he transgresses those rules 
he thereby forfeits his right to the enjoyment of liberty and the 
pursuit of happiness. While under our system of government 
sovereignty remains with the people, by whom and for whom all 
government exists and acts, yet here, as elsewhere, the individual 



142 TENURE AND TOIL. 

existing law, or are forfeited by its violation, then they 
may be taken from him, — not by an act of the legisla- 
ture, but in the due administration of the law itself 

does not enjoy personal liberty, exercise inherent sovereignty, or 
possess absolute rights which are separate and apart from the 
society of which he is a member. I do not contend, therefore, 
that the State cannot, through its legislature, prohibit the manu- 
facture, sale, and consumption of an article of commerce which is 
believed to be pernicious in its effects, and the cause of disease, 
pauperism, and crime. At the time the legislature of the State en- 
couraged and sanctioned the building of breweries, statistics 
similar to those accessible to every one tended to prove, then 
as now, "that the idleness, disorder, pauperism, and crime 
existing in the country are, in some degree at least, traceable 
to the evils of intemperance." Yet the States of Kansas and 
Iowa, when they were anxious to have their lands settled and cul- 
tivated, made large appropriations for the printing and distribu- 
tion of documents, in the G-erman and Scandinavian languages, 
setting forth the advantages of these States, the peculiar nature 
of the soil, and the splendid facilities for growing and producing 
hops, were not the least of the inducements held out to allure these 
frugal and thrifty peoples to settle upon their lands. The persons 
who built breweries built them not only under the tacit sanction of 
the law, but under its direct and positive assurance that they 
might do so with entire safety. There are no statistics accessible 
to any one to prove that the German and Scandinavian peoples 
are not among our best, law-abiding, temperate, and industrious 
citizens. 

The distinction which I draw in regard to the power of the 
State and the rights of those whose properties have been invaded 
and destroyed by legislation is very simple, — the mere distinction 
between right and wrong. The State has the power to prohibit 
the manufacture, sale, and consumption of intoxicating liquors, 
— that is the right of the State ; but to do so by destroying the 
use of the property in which the manufacture and sale had been 
conducted under the sanction of State law, without making just 
compensation therefor, is morally and legally wrong. 



SECURITY UNDER THE CONSTITUTION. 143 

before the judicial tribunals of the State. The cause or 
occasion for depriving the citizen of his supposed rights 
must be found in the law as it is, or, at least, it cannot 
be created by a legislative act which aims at their de- 
struction. " Where rights of property are admitted to 
exist the legislature cannot say they shall exist no 
longer, nor will it make any difference that a process 
and a tribunal are appointed to execute the sentence. 
If this is the ' law of the land/ and ' due process of 
law/ within the meaning of the constitution, then the 
legislature is omnipotent. It may, under the same in- 
terpretation, pass a law to take away liberty or life 
without a pre-existing cause, appointing judicial and 
executive agencies to execute its will."f 

" The right of property has no foundation or security 
but the law, and when the legislature shall successfully 
attempt to overturn it, even in a single instance, the 
liberty of the citizen is no more.";f 

Sir "William Blackstone, in his classification of fun- 
damental rights, says : " The third absolute right, in- 
herent in every Englishman, is that of property, which 
consists in the free use, enjoyment, and disposal of all 
his acquisitions, without any control or diminution, save 
only by the laws of the land. . . . The laws of Eng- 
land are, therefore, in point of honor and justice, ex- 
tremely watchful in ascertaining and protecting this 
right. Upon this principle the great charter has de- 
clared that no free man shall be disseized or divested 



f Comstock, J., in Winehamer vs. The People, 13 N. Y., 392. 
% Mr. Chief Justice Gibson in ISTooman vs. Heist, 5 Watt's and 
Sergeant (Pa.), 193. 



144 TENURE AND TOIL. 

of his freehold, or of his liberties or free customs, 
but by the judgment of his peers or the law of the 
land. ... So great, moreover, is the regard of the law 
for private property that it will not authorize the least 
violation of it ; no, not even for the general good of 
the whole community. ... In vain may it be urged 
that the good of the individual ought to yield to that 
of the community, for it would be dangerous to allow 
any private man, or even any public tribunal, to be the 
judge of this common good, and to decide whether it 
would be expedient or no. Besides, the public is in 
nothing more essentially interested than in the protec- 
tion of every individual's private rights, as modelled by 
the municipal law. In this and similar cases the legis- 
lature alone can, and indeed frequently does, interpose, 
and compel the individual to acquiesce. But how does 
it interpose and compel ? Not by absolutely stripping 
the subject of his property in an arbitrary manner, but 
by giving him a full indemnification and equivalent for 
the injury thereby sustained/' 

So that, according to Blackstone, the right of private 
property, in England, under a government founded 
upon the feudal principle, is more secure to the subject 
than it is to the citizen of the United States under a 
republican form of government. If this be the case, 
then away with the boasted guarantees of the American 
constitution ! 



THE STABILITY OF TENURE. 145 

CHAPTER VII. 

THE STABILITY OF TENURE. 

In chapter i., Book VIII., "Progress and Pov- 
erty/' Henry George says : " What is necessary for the 
use of land is not its private ownership but the security 
of improvements. It is not necessary to say to a man 
i this land is yours' in order to induce him to cultivate 
or improve it. It is only necessary to say to him 
' whatever your labor or capital produces on this land 
shall be yours.' Give a man security that he may 
reap, and he will sow; assure him of the possession 
of the house he wants to build, and he will build it. 
These are the natural rewards of labor." And again, 
in chapter ii., he says: "We should satisfy the law 
of justice, we should meet all economic requirements, 
by at one stroke abolishing all private titles, de- 
claring all land public property, and letting it out to 
the highest bidders in lots to suit under such con- 
ditions as would sacredly guard the private right to 
improvements." . . . " I do not propose either to pur- 
chase or to confiscate private property in land. The 
first would be unjust; the second, needless. Let the 
individuals who now hold it still retain, if they want 
to, possession of what they are pleased to call their 
land. Let them continue to call it their land. Let 
them buy and sell, and bequeath and devise it. We 
may safely leave them the shell if we take the kernel. 
a k 13 



146 • TENURE AND TOIL. 

It is not necessary to confiscate land ; it is only necessary 
to confiscate rent." The impracticability and injustice 
of this method will be readily seen and appreciated by 
the most casual observer. It must be inferred from 
his statements that Henry George is willing to let 
land to whomsoever would improve the same, and for 
any term of years or for all time, provided the fee to 
the land remained in the government. By no soph- 
istry could he convince even the most simple-minded 
that he might invest his earnings in improving a 
vacant lot without affording him some assurance of a 
fixity of tenure, and hence he is willing that in his 
republic any man who will improve his property shall 
be guaranteed protection in the nature of a lease for 
years, for life, or in perpetuity. But is this any pro- 
tection to him who invests his means in the improve- 
ment of vacant property ? Such men now hold the 
absolute title to their property under the guarantee of 
the constitution, and under that instrument there is no 
power in a municipality, a State, or in the Federal 
Government to take it away from them or to deprive 
them of it without just compensation. Yet Henry 
George and his disciples maintain that the paper titles, 
by and through which they claim title, are but old and 
musty documents, and that the titles which they evi- 
dence were acquired by fraud and force, by usurpation 
and confiscation, and therefore unworthy of protection. 
Granting these premises for the sake of argument, 
would the titles which they propose be more sacred or 
more durable? After George and his followers shall 
have overthrown our institutions and consigned these 



THE STABILITY OF TENURE. 447 

musty documents to the flames, and when new institu- 
tions are established, new compacts adopted, and new 
contracts entered into between the citizen and the 
State, and the industrious and frugal citizen improves 
his vacant property and feels secure in the protection 
of the law, a new doctrinaire writes a book on " Pro- 
gress and Poverty" to show that the bane of society is 
the monopoly of land, that the preceding government 
had no power to grant leases so as to bind succeeding 
generations, and that the panacea for all the ills of 
life is in the destruction of existing tenures; that 
instead of giving leases for years, for life, or in per- 
petuity, the owners of land must pay their rent in 
taxes to the full rental value of their holdings, the 
value to be determined by the assessor and collected by 
the tax-gatherer. Here again we are brought face to 
face with the same order of things and the same con- 
dition of society existing in India, China, and unhappy 
Ireland. Not only so, but the affairs of the govern- 
ment would be placed in the hands and under the con- 
trol of unscrupulous and corrupt officials who would 
hedge themselves around by political rings controlled by 
rum-sellers, fine workers, and pot-house politicians to 
such an extent that it would be impossible to remove 
them from office either through an election or by convic- 
tion in the criminal courts. The owners of property 
now try to control and manage it themselves or through 
their authorized agents, and nothing is left for public 
officials to do but to attend to the improvement of 
public highways, the distribution of public charities, 
the keeping and confinement of criminals and the like, 



148 TENURE AND TOIL. 

yet the country is cursed with boodlers and boodlerisrn. 
What would be the condition of affairs and the state 
of society if the powers of these public officials were 
enlarged and extended to the extent contemplated in 
Mr. George^s paper republic? 

It is conceded that before men will improve property 
they must be assured protection for improvements, 
permanent possession of the houses which they build, 
and without such assurance they will not make im- 
provements. What difference could it make to future 
generations whether George M. Pullman purchased 
absolutely the title to the property upon which he has 
built a city or agreed to give ten dollars an acre rent 
to the government for the use of the property iii 
perpetuity ? Ten dollars an acre was infinitely more 
than the land was worth by way of rental at the time 
Mr. Pullman took possession of it; but because he had 
the means and ability to improve it, he has made it 
valuable. It is no answer to assert that it would 
have been valuable in any event, because it would not 
but for the improvements made upon it. It might 
have lain there for a million years and all the specula- 
tions of philosophers that now live or who may here- 
after live, during all that time, could not by any 
subtlety of reasoning or any adroit application of the 
argument in regard to unearned increment add one 
dollar to its value, unless they could induce some 
capitalist to invest who had sufficient means and ability 
to establish factories and build up a city for the ac- 
commodation of the men and families employed in 
these factories. Mr. Pullman might have reclaimed a 



THE STABILITY OF TENURE. 149 

part of Lake Michigan, might have gone down to 
"Hoop Pole" Township in Indiana, if you please, and 
have made that property as valuable as now is the 
beautiful city of Pullman, which he found an unprofit- 
able and unproductive marsh. His capital is what 
made his own property valuable, and the improvements 
which he placed thereon increased the value of surround- 
ing property. The public and not the individual owner 
of the surrounding property are entitled to this in- 
crease. It is unnecessary to overthrow our institutions 
or to destroy existing tenures in order that the public 
may derive the benefit of the increase in value to the 
surrounding property. This may be accomplished by 
legislation in the manner proposed in the chapter on 
Unearned Increment. 

Suppose that fifty years ago Mr. Pullman made a 
contract with the government by which he was to pay 
ten dollars a year rent in perpetuity for a lot on the 
corner of State and Madison Streets, Chicago, which at 
that time would not have been deemed a very profita- 
ble investment or promising speculation on the part of 
Mr. Pullman; that he improved the lot by erecting 
thereon a dry-goods store which he has occupied ever 
since; and supposing the lot adjoining had not been 
improved, but, owing to the increase in the value of 
the property, the annual rental value of the adjoining 
lot is now worth a thousand dollars, note the advantage 
Mr. Pullman would have in business competition over 
the man who is now compelled to pay a yearly rental 
of a thousand dollars for the adjoining lot. Mr. Pull- 
man is a gainer to the extent of nine hundred and 

13* 



150 TENURE AND TOIL. 

ninety dollars per year by virtue of the improvements 
placed alongside of him by his neighbor, — a gainer to 
this extent without any effort on his part, — just as if 
he had bought the lot absolutely in the first place. 
Had he purchased the lot in the first instance, he would 
have been compelled to pay taxes in proportion to its 
increase in value, but as he rented the lot from the 
government at a fixed annual rent of ten dollars a 
year in perpetuity, this rent is the only tax which the 
government can exact from him in the future, so that 
the nine hundred and ninety dollars a year is his in- 
dividual gain. The government, therefore, is not only 
deprived of its just proportion of taxes incident to 
the increase in the value of the property, but the 
neighbors and competitors of the lot-owner are placed 
at a disadvantage by virtue of the monopoly acquired 
through his contract with the government. And thus 
it will be seen how impracticable and unjust is Mr. 
George's theory when subjected to the test of a com- 
mon-sense analysis. 



CHAPTER VIIL 



THE FALLACIES OF GEORGE'S LAND-TAX THEORY. 



In Book IX. chapter i., Henry George says : 
"The advantages which would be gained by sub- 
stituting for the numerous taxes by which the public 
revenues are now raised a single tax levied upon the 



THE FALLACIES OF GEORGE'S LAND-TAX. 151 

value of land will appear more and more important 
the more they are considered. This is the secret which 
would transform the little village into the great city. 
With all the burdens removed which now oppress 
industry and hamper exchange, the production of 
wealth would go on with a rapidity now undreamed 
of. This, in its turn, would lead to an increase in the 
value of land, — a new surplus which society might 
take for general purposes." 

This doctrine is laid down by its author as the 
remedy for unequal taxation. It is based upon the 
claim that ground values in the centres of the great 
marts of trade represent an immense " unearned incre- 
ment" and constitute the larger portion of investments 
in business real estate. This is also accompanied by 
its correlative that ground values in rural districts and 
in the outlying parts of towns and cities are so small, 
compared with the value of property in the heart of 
cities, that a single land-tax would rest easily on the 
farmer and the owners of lots in the cheaper residence 
portions of the city, while the capitalistic owners of 
lots and blocks in the business centres would have to 
bear the great burden. Subjecting this claim to a 
practical test will at once expose its fallacy, and dem- 
onstrate that this method of shifting tax-burdens, 
instead of relieving the farmer and small property 
owner and placing the heavier burden on the million- 
aire, will produce just opposite results. 

The properties listed below are located in the busi- 
ness- centre of Chicago; the assessment given being 
only about twenty per cent, of the true value : 



152 TENURE AND TOIL. 

Structure. Ground. Building. 

Board of Trade .$110,000 $300,000 

Palmer House 190,000 300,000 

Royal Insurance Company 40,000 116,000 

Sherman House 75,000 85,000 

Chicago Opera House 77,000 87,000 

Merchants' National Bank ....... 9,000 32,000 

Times Building 20,000 25,000 

Pullman Building 18,000 90,000 

J. V. Farwell ............. 100,000 160,000 

Marshall Field 109,000 129,000 

Insurance Exchange 50,000 75,000 

Chicago Deposit Yault 75,000 120,000 

Phcenix Insurance Company . ...... 80,000 125,000 

Lakeside Building 32,000 50,000 

Home Insurance Company 50,000 130,000 

Montauk Building 12,000 55,000 

It is seen that the immense " unearned increment" is 
invariably less than the improvement, and in some 
eases equals only one-third or one-fourth of it. The 
above figures reveal the utter fallacy of exempting 
immense business structures from taxation and laying 
the entire tax on the ground, not one foot of which may 
belong to the owners of the buildings. This condition 
obtains still more strongly in the case of residence 
property. The properties of this kind in the follow- 
ing list have dwellings which occupy in width nearly 
the entire lot frontage, and, of course, belong to the 
capitalist, upon whose shoulders Mr. George proposes 
to lay the burden of taxation : 

Ground, Building. 

No. 1 $5,500 $25,000 

No. 2 16,600 25,000 

No. 3 7,500 13,000 

No. 4 .... 3,000 20,000 

No. 5 2,500 12,000 

No. 6 . 5,000 10,000 



THE FALLACIES OF GEORGE'S LAND-TAX. 153 

In exceptional instances, where the ground is un- 
usually valuable or a larger area is reserved for the 
dwelling, the above ratio may be reversed. Improve- 
ments depreciate, and it is true that ground values 
usually appreciate, but it may be laid down as a rule 
that on the most desirable residence streets in all our 
cities first-class houses are valued higher than the 
ground upon which they stand. This being the actual 
relative condition of grounds and improvements, it is 
at once seen that the dweller in the humble cottage, if 
the land alone is to be taxed, will have proportionately 
heavier taxes to pay than owners of palatial residences. 
And more, many of the money barons do not possess a 
foot of land. Which is true also of the thousands of 
speculators who gamble and grow rich upon the stock 
and grain exchanges, in running corners on breadstuffs 
and provisions, and whose mercenary schemings and 
combinations frequently produce financial panics which, 
with other disturbances, cause depression of land values 
and increase the cost of living. And yet these men, 
according to George's theory of taxation, would be un- 
disturbed by the tax-gatherer, while the small home- 
steader, whose possessions they have depreciated and 
whose expenses they have increased, would have to 
pay tribute not only for himself but for his oppressors. 
Applying the theory of Mr. George to farm lands, 
its utter failure to produce the result claimed is still 
more apparent. The valuation of farm property in 
Massachusetts, as shown by the most reliable census 
ever taken in this country, gives the following re- 
sults : 



154 TENURE AND TOIL. 

Land $116,629,849 

Buildings . 66,033,291 

Land and Buildings $182,663,140 

Here we see that in a State of small land-holders, 
possessing many and costly improvements, but a poor 
soil, the ground value is nearly three-fourths of the 
total. This disproportion would be still greater in the 
vast farming districts of the West, where farms are 
larger, soil more fertile, and improvements meagre and 
inexpensive. The total value of town and city grounds 
and improvements in the United States, as shown by 
the last Federal census, is $10,000,000,000. Not more 
than three-tenths of this is naked ground value. 
George would extinguish rents by taxing this value at 
six per cent. Admitting that the farmers hold seven- 
tenths of the naked ground value of the country, they 
then would have to pay, following out George's theory, 
six per cent, on $7,000,000,000 or $420,000,000 yearly, 
which would be $108,000,000 more than is paid in 
State, county, township, and municipal taxes in the 
United States. In brief, the farmers, who (at a true 
valuation) own scarce one-half of the real estate of the 
country, would pay seven-tenths of all the taxes, and 
$100,000,000 more than is now paid on all real and 
personal property of every description. While the 
farmers would be groaning under this burden of 
taxation, the owners of town and city real estate, 
whose properties equal the farmers' in value, would 
pay taxes only on three-tenths of a true valuation. 
The city capitalists paying only $180,000,000 while 
$420,000,000 is exacted from the farmers. Would 



GEORGE'S SELF-REFUTATION. 155 

not this vaunted theory of Mr. George's work the most 
ruthless spoliation of the agricultural class? Let 
George himself answer. 



CHAPTER IX. 



george's self-refutation. 



In Book IX., chapter L, of " Progress and Poverty/' 
Mr. George exposes the fallacy of his own theory in 
these words : 

" For the simple device of placing all taxes on the 
value of land would be in effect putting up the land at 
auction to whoever would pay the highest rent to the 
State. The demand for land fixes its value, and hence, 
if taxes were placed so as to very nearly consume that 
value, the man who wished to hold land without using 
it would have to pay very nearly what it would be 
worth to any one who wanted to use it." 

This mode of taxation would instigate the same 
tyranny, the same causes for rack-renting, which Henry 
George describes and denounces in a previous part of 
his work in commenting upon the condition of the 
people of Ireland and India. In Book II., chapter 
ii., " Progress and Poverty," he says : 

"In India, from time immemorial, the working classes 
have been ground down by exactions and oppressions 
into a condition of helpless and hopeless degrada- 
tion. For ages and ages the cultivator of the soil has 
esteemed himself happy if, of his produce, the extor- 



156 TENURE AND TOIL. 

tion of the strong hand left him enough to support life 
and furnish seed ; capital could nowhere be safely 
accumulated or to any considerable extent be used to 
assist production ; all wealth that could be wrung from 
the people was in the possession of princes who were 
little better than robber chiefs quartered on the country, 
or in that of their farmers or favorites, and was wasted 
in useless or worse than useless luxury, while religion, 
sunken into an elaborate and terrible superstition, 
tyrannized over the mind as physical force did over 
the bodies of men. Under these conditions the only 
arts that could advance were those that ministered to 
the ostentation and luxury of the great. The elephants 
of the rajah blazed with gold of exquisite workman- 
ship, and the umbrellas that symbolized his regal power 
glittered with gems; but the plough of the ryot was only 
a sharpened stick. The ladies of the rajah's harem 
wrapped themselves in muslins so fine as to take the 
name of woven wind, but the tools of the artisan were 
of the poorest and rudest description, and commerce 
could only be carried on as it were by stealth. 

" Is it not clear that this tyranny and insecurity have 
produced the want and starvation of India, and not, as 
according to Buckle, the pressure of population upon 
subsistence that has produced the want, and the want 
the tyranny? The Rev. William Tennant, a chaplain 
in the service of the East India Company, writing in 
1796, two years before the publication of the ' Essay 
on Population/ says : ' When we reflect upon the great 
fertility of Hindostan, it is amazing to consider the 
frequency of famine. It is evidently not owing to any 



GEORGE'S SELF-REFUTATION. 157 

sterility of soil or climate ; the evil must be traced to 
some political cause, and it requires but little penetra- 
tion to discover it in the avarice and extortion of the 
various governments. The great spur to industry, that 
of security, is taken away. Hence no man raises more 
grain than is barely sufficient for himself, and the first 
unfavorable season produces a famine. 

" i The Mogul government at no period oifered full 
security to the prince, still less to his vassals, and to 
peasants the most scanty protection of all. It was 
a continued tissue of violence and insurrection, treach- 
ery and punishment, under which neither commerce 
nor the arts could prosper, nor agriculture assume the 
appearance of a system. Its downfall gave rise to a 
state more afflictive, since anarchy is worse than mis- 
rule. . . . The rents to government were, and, where 
natives rule, still are, levied twice a year by a merciless 
banditti, under the semblance of an army, who wan- 
tonly destroy or carry off whatever part of the produce 
may satisfy their caprice or satiate their avidity, after 
having hunted the ill-fated peasants from the villages 
to the woods. Any attempt of the peasants to defend 
their persons or property within the mud w r alls of their 
villages, only calls for the more signal vengeance on 
those useful but ill-fated mortals. They are then sur- 
rounded and attacked by musketry and field-pieces till 
resistance ceases, when the survivors are sold, and their 
habitations burnt and levelled with the ground. Hence 
you will frequently meet with ryots gathering up the 
scattered remnants of what had yesterday been their 
habitation, if fear has permitted them to return, but 

14 



158 TENURE AND TOIL. 

oftener the ruins are seen smoking, after a second visi- 
tation of this kind, without the appearance of a human 
being to interrupt the awful silence of desolation. 
This description does not apply to the Mohammedan 
chieftains alone, it is equally applicable to the rajahs 
in the districts governed by Hindoos.'" 
In speaking of Ireland Mr. George says : 
" It is difficult for one who has been looking over the 
literature of Irish misery, as while writing this chapter 
I have been doing, to speak in decorous terms of the 
complacent attribution of Irish want and suffering to 
over population which are to be found even in the works 
of such high-minded men as Mill and Buckle. I know 
of nothing better calculated to make the blood boil than 
the cold accounts of the grasping, grinding tyranny to 
which the Irish people have been subjected, and to 
which, and not to any inability of the land to support 
its population, Irish pauperism and Irish famine are 
to be attributed ; and were it not for the enervating 
effect which the history of the world proves to be every- 
where the result of abject poverty, it would be difficult 
to resist something like a feeling of contempt for a race 
who, stung by such wrongs, have only occasionally 
murdered a landlord ! . . . How could there fail to be 
pauperism and famine in a country where rack-rents 
wrested from the cultivator of the soil all the produce 
of his labor except just enough to maintain life in good 
seasons ; where tenure at will forbade improvements, 
and removed incentive to any but the most wasteful and 
poverty-stricken culture; where the tenant dared not 
accumulate capital, even if he could get it, for fear the 



GEORGE'S SELF-REFUTATION. 159 

landlord would demand it in the rent ; where, in fact, 
he was an abject slave, who, at the nod of a human 
being like himself, might at any time be driven from 
his miserable mud cabin, a houseless, homeless, starving 
wanderer, forbidden even to pluck the spontaneous 
fruits of the earth, or to trap a wild hare to satisfy his 
hunger? No matter how sparse the population, no 
matter what the natural resources, are not pauperism 
and starvation necessary consequences in a land where 
the producers of wealth are compelled to work under 
conditions which deprive them of hope, of self-respect, 
of energy, of thrift; where absentee landlords drain 
away without return, at least a fourth of the net pro- 
duce of the soil, and when, besides them, a starving 
industry must support resident landlords, with their 
horses and hounds, agents, jobbers, middlemen, and 
bailiffs, an alien state church to insult religious preju- 
dices, and an army of policemen and soldiers to over- 
awe and hunt down any opposition to the iniquitous 
system ? Is it not impiety far worse than atheism to 
charge upon natural laws misery so caused ? . , . 

" At the period of her greatest population (1840-45), 
Ireland contained something over eight millions of 
people. But a very large proportion of them managed 
merely to exist, — lodging in miserable cabins, clothed 
with miserable rags, and with but potatoes for their staple 
food. When the potato blight came they died by thou- 
sands. But was it the inability of the soil to support so 
large a population that compelled so many to live in this 
miserable way, and exposed them to starvation on the 
failure of a single root crop ? On the contrary, it was 



160 TENURE AND TOIL. 

the same remorseless rapacity that robbed the Indian 
ryot of the fruits of his toil, and left him to starve 
where nature offered plenty. A merciless banditti of tax- 
gatherers did not march through the land plundering and 
torturing, but the laborer was just as effectively stripped 
by as merciless a horde of landlords, among whom the 
soil had been divided as their absolute possession, re- 
gardless of any rights of those who lived upon it. 

" Consider the conditions of production under which 
this eight millions managed to live until the potato 
blight came. It was a condition to which the words 
used by Mr. Tennant in reference to India may as ap- 
propriately be applied, ' the great spur to industry, that 
of security, was taken away.' Cultivation was for the 
most part carried on by tenants-at-will, who, even if 
the rack-rents which they were forced to pay had per- 
mitted them, did not dare to make improvements which 
would have been but the signal for an increase of rent. 
Labor was thus applied in the most inefficient and 
wasteful manner, and labor was dissipated in aimless 
idleness, that, with any security for its fruits, would 
have been applied unremittingly." 

Further comment becomes unnecessary. Mr. George's 
argument is the refutation of his own theory. By 
" putting up the land at auction, to whoever would pay 
the highest rent to the State," no man would be secure 
in his possessions. An army of tax-gatherers, rivals in 
rapacity of the " merciless banditti" of India, who 
carry off whatever part of the produce might satiate 
their avidity, or of the crow-bar militia who raze to 
the ground the houses of the Irish peasantry, would 



GEORGE'S SELF-REFUTATION. \§\ 

infest the land, despoiling the peasantry of all the 
fruits of their labor, and crushing every inducement to 
industry. 

The feudal serf was bound to the soil and ordinarily 
had the right to live and die upon it, but no legal tie 
binds George's tenant of the commonwealth to the land 
which he improves. The civilizing influences and 
endearing charms of home can never find lodgement in 
the mind and affections of an unsettled and restless 
peasantry. 



u* 



book: iv. 

LABOR; ITS WRONGS AND THEIR REMEDIES. 



CHAPTER I. 

LABOR. 



Labor is the life of the world. Labor ministers 
to the wants of the body, and awakens the tenderest* 
emotions of the soul. Labor is the creator of wealth, 
the employer of capital. Labor, not gold or silver, is 
the true standard of values. What can a pair of hands 
produce ? Croesus views with alarm a depreciation of 
values, but witnesses with indifference the debasement 
of labor. Pauperism has become a constitutional vice, 
immorality a chronic disease. The savage, in his un- 
tutored freedom, claims ownership in the forest, and is 
a patriot in the desert. The laborer of to-day is a 
slave, — an alien to the soil he tills, without home or 
country. His vote elects the law-maker, but the voice 
of capital dictates the law. Labor advances, marches, 
but makes no progress. Its progress is another's. The 
accumulation of wealth is not progress. The decline 
of Rome began when it was gorged with the riches of 
the provinces. We are to-day a national anomaly,—- 
a marvel of wealth and a prodigy of want. While our 
162 



LABOR. 153 

national progress is the wonder of the world, the 
wretchedness of our millions portends degeneracy and 
decay. We subordinate the spiritual to the physical, 
and in crowning the material we dethrone the divine. 
Labor is a slave to wealth. A slave is not a patriot. 
Labor builds palaces for its master, but has not even a 
hovel which it can call its own. Labor is without 
motives to courage, without incentives to industry. 
Labor has no ideals to give it dignity beyond its im- 
mediate wants and circumstances. 

In advocating the elevation of labor, I offer no 
premium upon indolence. Labor is free from the dross 
of idleness. Labor seeks nothing but its just reward. 
Labor has no " yearnings for an equal division of un- 
equal earnings." This is a libel upon labor. The 
unequal division of equal earnings enervates and en- 
slaves labor. It defaces and destroys the family altar, 
it severs the most sacred ties, and works the ruin of 
home. It draws the veil of hypocrisy over the face of 
the moral teacher, and transforms trusted officials into 
defaulters and embezzlers. It fills the poor-house, and 
crowds the prison. It makes anarchists of men that 
have enriched others by their toil, but who see their 
own wives and children without shelter or bread. 
" Work," not " charity," is the demand of labor. 
The equal division of equal earnings is the right of 
labor. Out of the nettle of toil we pluck the flower 
of progress. 

Justice to labor is a conservation of the equity of 
the nation, redounding to the preservation and per- 
petuity of the republic. u Justice to Labor" must 



164 TENURE AND TOIL. 

become our watchword and battle-cry, for labor is the 
mode of man. The Author of life wills and com- 
mands it, — " In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat 
bread till thou return to the earth out of which thou 
wast taken." Nature ordains and proclaims it. Labor 
is typified in God and personified in all His works. The 
earth and the sea, not less than the beasts and the fishes, 
labor. Without labor, man cannot exist. Labor is 
the song of the fields and the anthem of the heavens. 
Labor is the sunshine and the shower. There is 
motion, there is labor, in all things. Wisely, Virgil 
wrote "Labor omnia vincit," for labor overcomes, sub- 
dues, and conquers all things. Labor makes and builds 
up the physical man, the moral man, and the intellect- 
ual man, — " There is nothing better for a man than 
that he should eat and drink, and that he should make 
his soul enjoy good in his labor." The troubled heart 
finds rest in labor, for " man is born to labor as the 
young birds take up their flight." It is meet that man 
should labor, for labor is the sum of his existence. 
" Whatsoever thy hand is able to do, do it earnestly, 
for neither work, nor reason, nor wisdom, nor knowl- 
edge shall be in hell." Rest and repose are added to 
the reward of him that labors, — " Sleep is sweet to a 
laboring man, whether he eat little or much ; but the 
fulness of the rich will not suffer him to sleep." The 
earth is the field and the workshop where all is life and 
all is labor. The rivers run to the sea, and " unto the 
place from whence the rivers come, whither they return 
again," ascending in myriads of rays reflected from the 
sun, descending in the sparkling dew-drop and in the 



LABOR. Kj5 

life-giving shower, shedding heaven's benediction upon 
the labor of man's hands. " He that tiileth the land 
shall be filled with bread," but " an idle soul shall 
suffer hunger." By labor we found cities ; " by 
slothfulness, a building is brought down." Solomon 
says, " I passed by the field of the slothful man, and 
by the vineyard of the foolish man: and, behold, it 
was all filled with nettles ; and thorns had covered the 
face thereof; and the stone wall was broken down. 
Which, when I had seen, I laid it up in my heart : 
and by the example I received instruction. Thou wilt 
sleep a little, said I : thou wilt slumber a little; thou 
wilt fold thy hands a little to rest : and poverty shall 
come to thee as a runner, and beggary as an armed 
man." 

Labor inspires the imagination, elevates the thought, 
and ennobles the mind. " He that gathereth by labor 
shall increase," but " wealth gotten in haste shall be 
diminished." Labor is the harbinger of civilization ; 
idleness and envy and covetousness and sloth disappear 
befoie labor as snow disappears before the summer sun. 
Labor is the condition of man, the harmony of nature, 
the apostrophe to God. Labor is the song of David, 
the voice of the prophets, the parable of the sower, the 
lesson of the talents, the Lord's Prayer, the Sermon on 
the Mount, the life of- the body, the harmony of the 
soul, the religion of heaven. 

Any system of religion, philosophy, or political 
economy that discourages honest labor by teaching that 
the land which other men reclaim, cultivate, and make 
fruitful belongs as much to him that sleeps as to him 



166 TENURE AND TOIL. 

that toils is contrary to the laws of natural justice, 
inimical to civilization, and blasphemous as against 
things sacred and essential to the welfare of society. 
Sublimely moral is the lesson which Hesiod * taught : 

" But thou, O Perses I what my words impart 
Let memory bind forever on thy heart. 
O son of Dios ! labor evermore, 
That hunger turn abhorrent from thy door ; 
That Ceres bless'd, with spiky garland crown'd, 
Greet thee with love, and bid thy barns abound. 
Still on the sluggard hungry want attends ; 
The scorn of man, the hate of Heaven impends ; 
While he, averse from labor, drags his days, 
Yet greedy on the gains of others preys ; 
E'en as the stingless drones, devouring seize, 
"With glutted sloth, the harvest of the bees. 
Love every seemly toil, that so the store 
Of foodful seasons heap thy garner's floor. 
Prom labor, men returns of wealth behold, 
Flocks in their fields, and in their coffers, gold : 
From labor shalt thou with the love be bless'd 
Of men and gods ; the slothful they detest. 
Not toil, but sloth, shall ignominious be; 
Toil, and the slothful man shall envy thee ; 
Shall view thy growing wealth with alter'd sense 
For glory, virtue, walk with opulence. 
Thou, like a god, since labor still is found 
The better part, shalt live beloved, renown'd ; 
If, as I counsel, thou thy witless mind, 
Though weak and empty as the veering wind, 
From others' coveted possessions turn'd, 
To thrift compel, and food by labor earn'd. 

* Herodotus says that Hesiod was born about 884 years be- 
fore Christ, and Pliny speaks of him as the earliest writer who 
laid down precepts of agriculture. 



CAPITAL SHOULD SHARE PROFITS WITH LABOR. 167 

With thy best means perform the ritual part, 
Outwardly pure, and spotless at the heart ; 
Now burn choice portions to the gods ; dispense 
Wine-offerings now, and smoke of frankincense ; 
When on the nightly couch thy limbs repose, 
Or sacred light from far its coming shows : 
So shall they yearn to thee with soul benign, 
And thou buy others' lands, not others thine." 



CHAPTER II. 

CAPITAL SHOULD SHARE PROFITS WITH LABOR. 

The wide gulf which separates labor and capital 
may be bridged and the bitter differences which are 
fostering a dangerous antagonism between them may 
be harmonized in a simple and practical manner, viz. : 
By allowing the laborer to participate in the profits of 
his employer's business, — profits which are the joint 
products of his labor and his employer's capital. For 
example, I have one million dollars, which I desire to 
invest in a manufacturing, railway, or other business 
venture, but, to inaugurate the enterprise and carry it on 
successfully, I must enlist the services and co-operation 
of one hundred men. Unless I can do so, my million 
dollars is an unproductive encumbrance upon my hands, 
since it, in and of itself, can yield no profit. I find one 
hundred men who are anxious and willing to work, but 
are unable for want of capital to engage in business for 
themselves. The capital represented by the labor of 



168 TENURE AND TOIL. 

these men is virtually lost to them, since they cannot 
utilize it. I approach these men and I say to A, "Your 
labor is worth five hundred dollars a year; now if you 
give your time and labor to a business enterprise which 
I desire to establish, I will pay you five hundred 
dollars a year as wages, and, in addition thereto, I will 
give you an interest in the concern equal to double the 
amount of your annual salary, so that, if the invest- 
ment prove profitable, you will be entitled to a dividend 
from the profits at the end of every year on a sum 
equal to one thousand dollars of the capital stock." 
To B, who is a skilled laborer, I say, " I will pay you 
one thousand dollars a year for your services, and I will 
give you an interest in the concern equal to one and 
three-fourths as much as your annual salary." To C, 
whom I wish to place in charge of a department, I say, 
" I will pay you two thousand dollars a year for your 
services, and give you an interest in the concern equal 
to one and one-half times your annual salary." And 
so on, decreasing the amount of the interest given each 
employe in the concern in relative proportion to the in- 
crease of salary, so that the common laborer or person 
who receives the smallest pay for his services will have 
the largest relative interest in the welfare of the enter- 
prise, and to that extent he will be the more careful and 
vigilant in promoting and protecting its interests. The 
million dollars cash actually invested and the whole 
amount represented as the equivalent of labor would 
constitute the capital stock for the purpose of partici- 
pating in the profits. The men employed would, in 
this way, receive the same pay for their services, or 



CAPITAL SHOULD SHARE PROFITS WITH LABOR. 169 

nearly so, as they do now, and the capital represented 
as the equivalent of labor would simply be a working 
interest given to the men, in one sense, as an induce- 
ment in order to incite them to a greater vigilance and 
more effective industry, and, in another sense, as a more 
just and equitable mode of compensating labor. It 
may be urged that after the men are paid reasonable 
wages as the reward of their labor I ought to be allowed 
a certain percentage of the earnings before the employes 
would be allowed to participate in profits. But when 
it is considered that labor and not money is the basis of 
all values, no injustice can be done the capitalist in per- 
mitting the laborer to stand upon equality with him in 
the division of profits. The amount I pay the laborer 
is not the real value of his labor, as the real value 
should be the net profits arisiug from the sale of the 
thing or article produced by him, but it is simply an 
approximate value which barely enables him to live 
and support himself while performing the labor. The 
amount which I pay him, therefore, is paid him upoi> 
the same basis that I pay for a tie or rail, a locomotive 
or car. It is as necessary to purchase his labor in 
order to build the road as it is to purchase the right of 
way and the materials used in its construction. The 
right of way, the tie, the rail, the locomotive engine, 
the car, and the labor which produced and brought to- 
gether these several parts may be sold and converted 
into money, and thereby I receive back the equivalent 
which I paid for the labor just the same as I receive 
back, with accrued profits, that which I paid for the 
right of way and the materials cut of which the road 
h 15 



170 TENURE AND TOIL. 

is built and equipped. So that the cash which I invest 
I may receive back at any time, while the capital which 
represents the labor of the workman is lost to him. 
He has invested his labor in my enterprise, and it has 
become wholly merged therein, lost to him ; but as long 
as the industry endures, the profit-producing power of 
that labor is contributing to the enhancement of my 
business and the increase of my revenue. Hence, as the 
representative value of the workman's labor operates 
as an ever-present and positive investment in the enter- 
prise just the same as my million dollars, and which, 
like the right of way and materials, contributes to the 
growth and consequent increase of its value, it is not 
unjust to me that he should participate in the net prof- 
its produced as the combined result of his labor and 
my capital. The fact that the ratio between the profit- 
producing pow T er of a million dollars and that of a 
thousand is so much greater than the ratio between the 
two amounts themselves, is an important element for 
consideration, and should be recognized in passing 
judgment upon the equity of the plan of co-operation 
here proposed. All men in their exercise of watchful 
care and industrious skill are largely actuated by selfish 
motives, and when interested in and part owners, as it 
were, of a business, will not be apt to unite with or 
enter into combinations, strikes, or boycotts that would 
injure or destroy their own interests. If I should de- 
vote my time and energy in attending to the concerns 
of business, I ought to be paid reasonable compensation 
for my services, the same as any other em ploy 6 capable 
of attending to similar duties, but there ought not to be 



CAPITAL SHOULD SHARE PROFITS WITH LABOR. 171 

any sinecures attached to it, or relatives or favorites 
connected with it receiving compensation for services 
never performed. After salaries of employes and other 
legitimate expenses of the business are paid, the net 
profit should be divided upon the basis already stated, 
in the same way as stock dividends are now divided 
among stockholders. A scheme of this kind could be 
adapted to railroad, manufacturing, and business ven- 
tures of every kind, where labor and capital are 
mutually dependent upon one another, each indispen- 
sable to the success of the other. The only difficulty to 
overcome arises in adjusting matters so that there can 
be no evasion or fraud practised by employers upon the 
employes on the one hand, and that upon no trivial or 
flimsy pretext can the employes involve the concern in 
litigation on the other. An intelligent, broad-gauge 
attention to details will obviate any difficulty which can 
arise between employe" and employer under wise legis- 
lation, defining and limiting their relative rights and 
duties. When one estimates the magnitude of loss to 
capital and labor, the inconvenience to the public and 
detriment to business which have been occasioned by 
strikes, boycotts, and lock-outs during the past few 
years, he must conclude that some remedy ought to be 
adopted to prevent their recurrence. What better pre- 
ventive measure can be devised or suggested than to 
make every man a joint participator with his employer 
in the profits arising from his vigilant and skilful 
labor, and to hold both parties to a strict observance 
and performance of their mutual rights and duties? 



172 TENURE AND TOIL. 



CHAPTER III. 

STRIKES AND LOCK-OUTS PREVENTED BY ARBITRA- 
TION. 

The third annual report of the Commissioner of 
Labor to the Secretary of Interior, submitted December, 
1887, covering the six years ending December 31, 
1886, is a startling exhibit of the strained conditions 
existing between Labor and Capital, and a pregnant 
portrayal of the great losses to both factors of industry 
in strikes and lock-outs, which are the legitimate result- 
ants of these strained conditions. The strike is the 
unintelligent effort of the workman to remedy his 
wrongs, and the lock-out is the venal resort of the em- 
ployer to reduce wages or limit production. 

The report exhibits simply the facts belonging to 
each industrial trouble, and the bare statement of these 
frozen facts is sufficient, — it carries with it its own 
commentary. 

Figures speak, and there are voicings in the follow- 
ing table it were wise for the money-masters and law- 
makers to hearken to and heed : 

-ijv,i„T,n„ -u „, +„ Average No. of Estab- 

Tear. Strikes. Establishments lishments illvolved 

involved. . n each gtrike> 

1881 471 2,928 6.2 

1882 454 2,105 4.6 

1883 478 2,759 5.8 

1884 443 2,367 5.3 

. 1885 645 2,284 3.5 

• 1886 1411 9,861 7.0 

Total Average... 3902 22,304 Gen. Av. 5.7 



STRIKES AND LOCK-OUTS PREVENTED, ETC. I73 

New York and Chicago, the two great trade centres 
of our country, had the largest number of establish- 
ments affected. The total number of employes involved 
in the whole number of strikes was 1,323,203, — a num- 
ber equal to the entire population of bread-winners in 
the State of New York. The number of employes 
originating the strikes was 1,020,156. Is it rational to 
assert that no just cause for complaint exists when over 
one million of men unite to obtain one common end? 
The number of employes in all establishments prior to 
the strikes was 1,660,835, while the whole number em- 
ployed after the strikes was 1,635,047, a loss of 25,788. 
This decrease in the number employed is a witness, that 
can neither be bribed nor intimidated, to the truth of 
the charge that strikes are sometimes provoked by em- 
ployers themselves when they desire to curtail their 
working force and wish to shirk the responsibility of 
turning men out of work. During the period named 
there were 2214 establishments in which lock-outs were 
ordered, employing 175,270 men before the lock-outs, 
and 170,747 after, — another loss to labor caused by the 
rapacity of capital. 74.84 per cent, of the whole num- 
ber of establishments affected by the strikes, and 89.48 
per cent, of the lock-outs, were in New York, Pennsyl- 
vania, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Illinois, which five 
States contain 49 per cent, of all the manufacturing 
establishments, and employ 58 per cent, of the capital 
invested in mechanical industries in the United States. 
Of the 22,304 establishments in which strikes oc- 
curred, 18,342, or 82.24 per cent., of them were 
ordered bv labor organizations, while of the 2214 

15* 



174 TENURE AND TOIL. 

lock-outs, 79.18 per cent, were ordered by combina- 
tions of managers. 

The .results of the strikes, so far as gaining the ob- 
jects sought, were as follows : Successful, 10,375, or 
46.52 per cent. ; partially successful, 3004, or 13.47 
per cent. ; and failure followed in 8910 cases, or 39.95 
per cent. By lock-outs, 564 establishments, or 25.47 
per cent., succeeded in gaining their points ; 190, or 
8.58 per cent., partially succeeded ; and 1339, or 60.48 
per cent., failed. As to causes or objects of strikes, the 
report referred to shows that an increase of wages was 
the principal one, — 42.32 per cent. The other leading 
causes : reduction of hours, 19.48 per cent. ; against 
reduction of wages, 7.77 per cent. ; for increase of 
wages and reduction of hours, 7.59 per cent. ; against 
increase of hours, 0.62 per cent. 

The losses to strikers and employers is given as fol- 
lows : Losses to strikers, $51,814,723, and loss to em- 
ployes through lock-outs, $8,157,717, making a total 
wage-loss of $59,972,440. The assistance given to 
strikers and to those suffering from lock-outs was 
$4,430,595. The employers' losses through strikes 
amounted to $30,701,553; through lock-outs, 
$3,362,261 ; or a total loss of $34,163,814. 

These strikes and lock-outs — the conflict between 
labor and capital — are rendered possible by the inade- 
quacy of our legislation to provide for the former and 
control the latter. Whether these forces shall continue 
in conflict until labor destroys capital, or capital reduces 
labor to a vassalage worse than African slavery, or 
whether they shall be brought into perfect harmony 



STRIKES AND LOCK-OUTS PREVENTED, ETC. 175 

with each other, depends upon the capacity of those who 
frame the Jaws to meet the exigencies of present con- 
ditions. Every conflict between labor and capital finds 
its primal cause in bad statutes, and is a natural result- 
ant of the perversion of justice which finds expression 
in the enforcement of rights that are legal but unjust. 
The State may, and ought to, make provision for the 
speedy adjustment of the differences which give rise to 
strikes and lock-outs. This might be done without 
creating new tribunals or officers. We have a super- 
abundance of officers now. The law should provide 
that the parties considering themselves aggrieved, 
whether locomotive engineers, moulders, bakers, or 
brewers, on the one hand, or the employers on the 
' other, shall present to the Chief Justice of the Supreme 
Court of their State, a petition setting forth in full and 
detail their grievances ; that notice shall thereupon be 
given to the parties complained of, who shall within a 
certain day, to be fixed by the Chief Justice, answer 
the charges in full, after which an opportunity may be 
given petitioners to reply. Should it be claimed that 
the issues thus made up do not present the matter 
fairly, the counsel or persons representing the respective 
parties shall set forth the points upon which they dis- 
agree, and thereupon the Chief Justice shall refer the 
matter to some person to be named by him to take 
testimony upon the points of disagreement. The person 
so named shall be clothed with all the powers of a 
chancellor, who shall issue subpoenas and cause wit- 
nesses to come before him to testify to such matters. 
In order to avoid delay and to prevent unnecessary 



176 TENURE AND TOIL. 

expenses, no more than two witnesses on each side 
should be allowed on any one point, as the merits or de- 
merits of the claims of the respective parties will be as 
readily comprehended from a very few as from a great 
number of witnesses, the main question for deter- 
mination being which party is at fault in the matter, — 
differing in this respect from a contest over rights of 
property. After the issues are thus settled and the 
testimony taken, the Chief Justice shall name three 
Circuit Court judges, to meet at a time and place to be 
designated by him, to examine into and determine the 
questions involved. The decision of the judges so 
named, or any two of them, shall be final and con- 
clusive, and binding upon the parties interested. Until 
after the announcement of said decision it shall be 
unlawful for the leader of any combination of men to 
order a strike, and any person offending shall be guilty 
of misdemeanor and liable to fine or imprisonment, or 
both, in the discretion of the Court ; and it shall also 
be unlawful for any corporation or individual to order 
a lock-out, the penalty for so doing to be the payment 
of full wages to the men affected by such lock-out, and 
one thousand dollars to be recovered in an action of 
debt for the use of the school fund. 

The next question for serious consideration arises as 
to how the decision of this tribunal should be enforced. 
This is a difficulty of the utmost magnitude, for of 
what value, it may be asked, is the decision of a tribunal 
unless that decision can be enforced. " Of all the parts 
of a law/' says Blackstone, " the most effectual is the 
vindicatory. For it is but lost labor to say, ( do this/ 



STRIKES AND LOCK-OUTS PREVENTED, ETC. 177 

or ' avoid that/ unless we also declare, ' this shall be 
the consequence of your non-compliance/ We must, 
therefore, observe that the main strength and force of a 
law consists in the penalty annexed to it." No one will 
question the force of this assertion as applied to mu- 
nicipal laws prescribing rules of civil conduct. Never- 
theless, the object of the law proposed is not so much to 
prescribe a rule of civil conduct as it is to ascertain the 
causes which give rise to certain difficulties and adjust 
these difficulties by amicable arbitration. The object 
is to create a tribunal, which shall stand impartial and 
indifferent between the parties, whose decision will be 
relieved of the rancor and bitterness which invariably 
follow an arbitration arrived at by the parties interested, 
and which is usually characterized as a victory or back- 
down by the one party or the other. Which party in 
fault could bear up and sustain itself with the public 
against a judicial finding that it is in the wrong? Be- 
sides, I should deprecate the wisdom of legislation 
which would seek to compulsorily enforce a decree of 
this nature upon either party to the controversy. Even 
the Statute of Laborers of Edward III. of England 
soon became a dead letter, and if such legislation became 
inoperative and ineffectual in the days of feudal bond- 
age, it were folly to attempt similar experiments in 
this day and generation. Let us simply create a tribunal 
to take the place of the opinionated laborer on the one 
side, and the haughty employer on the other, and in the 
legislation creating it provide a penalty somewhat simi- 
lar to that suggested herein, so as to prevent the one or 
the other party from precipitating a strike or lock-out 

m 



178 TENURE AND TOIL. 

until the question as to who is in fault shall be judicially 
ascertained and determined. 

When Anacharsis visited Solon, and knew the nature 
of the institutions which that sage law-giver designed 
to establish at Athens, he laughed at his undertaking 
and at the absurdity of imagining he could restrain the 
avarice and injustice of his citizens by written laws. 
These laws, he said, resembled, in all respects, spiders' 
webs, and would, like them, only entangle and hold the 
poor and weak, while the rich and powerful easily broke 
through them. To this Solon replied, (i Men keep 
their agreements when it is an advantage to both 
parties not to break them ; and he would so frame his 
laws as to make it evident to the Athenians that it 
would be more for their interest to observe than to 
transgress them." The same may be said in the case 
proposed. It would be to the mutual advantage of 
both parties to observe rather than transgress the 
decree. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE GLARIS ARTISAN AN INDEPENDENT COMMONER. 

These strikes are but the physical manifestation of 
a deep-seated discontent with things as they are in the 
industrial world, — a discontent while protesting at 
times violently against wrongs unquestioned, yet dreads 



THE QLARIS ARTISAN, ETC. 179 

in the righting of these wrongs to go to the extreme 
length which outraged humanity prompts, for the 
reason that man will endure oppressions grievous to be 
borne rather than involve himself in turbulence. The 
political utopia, — the fairy-land of political dreamers, — 
in which a perfect natural order of things should obtain 
through the untrammelled action of social forces, has, 
like the fabled Atlantis, vanished from sight. It has 
been superseded on the one hand by pessimism, on the 
other, and more generally, it has given way to a de- 
termination not to let things go on themselves, but to 
make them go in such manner as may be desired. The 
conviction is growing that, in the divine economy, it 
was never proposed that a social and industrial world 
should be left to itself. The material is given out of 
which man may construct a social order and formulate 
a political system consistent with right, justice, and the 
well-being of society. This is the basis of modern 
progress, social, industrial, and political. Acting upon 
this basis, and imbued with these principles, the 
founders of our institutions aimed to construct a system 
of government which should keep pace with the prog- 
ress of events and endure for ages. It seems they 
have but led us to the verge of a precipice unless we 
are able, in some measure, to equalize the inequality of 
social conditions which, in this country, exist side by 
side with political equality. Laveleye's words of 
timely warning are : " Either you must establish a 
more equitable division of property and produce, or 
the fatal end of democracy will be despotism and de- 
cadence after a series of social struggles, of which the 



180 TENURE AND TOIL. 

horrors committed in Paris, in 1871, may. serve as a 
foretaste." 

The soul of popular states is equality. This is 
the ethics of the advanced thought of to-day, — no 
romance but realistic, — stepping out from the dim light 
of the student's lamp into the broad sunlight seeking 
actualization among the people. Co-operation is the 
new social form. Practicalists may sneer at it as a 
dream. The dream of to-day becomes the deed of to- 
morrow. It is the gospel of the true crusade of com- 
petition against monopoly, of industrial freedom against 
commercial vassalage, of social order against impend- 
ing anarchy. Its apostles are preaching it in every 
land. Its spread is heralded with joy by the most 
eminent thinkers and wisest publicists of the day. 
Practical applications of its humane principles have 
been, and are being, made in many small communities, 
and with most beneficent results. The common good 
of the many is of paramount importance to the in- 
dividual interests of the privileged few. In a recog- 
nition of this truth as the basic principle of our 
political and industrial economy lies the solution of 
those social problems which are now vexing the nations 
of the world, our own not less, but rather more, than 
any other. 

Nowhere can the efficacy of this principle, in its 
practical workings, be as fully observed as in the 
Canton of Glaris, Switzerland. There we have an 
agrarian organization of a most remote period, com- 
bined with the conditions of modern industry, which, 
supplemented by the right of occupation in the com- 



THE GLARIS ARTISAN, ETC. 181 

mon mark, has wrought a priceless improvement in 
the condition of the common workmen in the great 
factories. Glaris is one of those districts in Europe 
where the much larger number of the laborers are em- 
ployed in industrial occupation. Over one-third of the 
inhabitants (thirty thousand) live directly by such 
occupations, and nearly all the others indirectly. The 
workmen obtain of right, and without payment, a 
house in which to live, and a field for the cultivation 
of fruits and vegetables. They pay little or no taxes. 
The expenses of the public service are provided for in 
the revenue of property set apart for the purpose, all 
the public institutions having their separate alp, forest, 
and arable, the yield from which is sufficient for their 
maintenance. How marked the contrast between the 
condition of the Pittsburg mechanic and that of the 
workman of Glaris ! The former breathing an atmos- 
phere befouled with smoke, with a hovel in some 
narrow and crowded street as the only abiding-place 
for himself and family, and the corner saloon as the 
only resort open to him where he can forget his life 
and drudgery. The latter breathes the fresh, pure air 
of his mountain-girdled valley, and is under the 
generous influence of sublime natural surroundings. 
He dwells in his own home, tills his own field, — his by 
right, natural and inalienable. He raises much of the 
food necessary to supply his family, and thus grows 
firmly attached to the soil which he owns and uses, to 
the community in which he is recognized as an active 
factor, feeling himself bound with the bond of com- 
mon ownership, and by the common exercise of the 

16 



182 TENURE AND TOIL. 

same rights to his neighbors and fellow-citizens. His 
manhood is developed in power to do and in capacity 
to enjoy. The consciousness of his own entity, being 
an acknowledged force and factor, imbues his life with 
a purpose and a power, which, in combination with the 
same agency dominating the lives of his fellow-mem- 
bers, brings steadiness of pursuit, a healthy progress, 
and restful happiness to the entire community. 

The forbidding conditions of the American work- 
man breed in his mind an enmity of social order, a 
hatred of his employer and of capital, a feeling of un- 
rest and bitter discontent that ripens into revolt. The 
Swiss commoner, contented in the enjoyment of all the 
natural rights of man, thinks not — the thought would 
do violence to his own nature — of conspiring against 
a system which provides him such bounteous benefits, 
and which his own vote helps to perpetuate. Liberty, 
fraternity, equality to him are not merely the empty 
shibboleth of the demagogue or the meaningless label 
of a public document. His personal liberty is com- 
plete, and comes down to him clothed in the sanctity of 
ages; equality is a fact admitted and upheld in all his 
laws ; fraternity is more than a sentiment, it is embodied 
in social and economic systems which recognize the 
people of the same community as members of a com- 
mon family, sharing equally in the heritage bequeathed 
from sire to son. 



AN IDEAL INDUSTRIAL COMMUNITY. 133 

CHAPTER V. 

PULLMAN AS AN IDEAL INDUSTRIAL COMMUNITY. 

In contrast with the AUemand system, so admirable 
in operation and so beneficent in results, let us sketch 
outlines of the most extensive experiment of any thing 
approaching this character that we have in the United 
States. We refer to that social experimentation known 
as Pullman, 111., the vastness of the scale upon which it 
is operated constituting its only significance. And for 
this reason it compels examination and discussion at this 
day, when dynamite is the terror of thrones, when the 
murmurings of discontent are swelling into imprecations 
that threaten to become the battle-cries of a revolution, 
and when the earnest, honest friends of humanity, feel- 
ing an eager interest in social and economic conditions, 
are searching for a solution of these industrial problems 
independent of the dogmas and teachings of a superfine 
political economy. Pullman is a town of ten thousand 
dwellers, ten miles south of Chicago, founded by the 
Pullman Palace Car Company — i.e., George M. Pull- 
man — seven years ago. It was to be at once a centre 
of industry and a home for the employes of the com- 
pany and such other laborers as might be drawn hither 
by other opportunities for employment. Its growth has 
been rapid, owing to the many manufactories established 
there, all of which, however, are directly or indirectly 
operated or dominated by the one central power, — the 



184 TENURE AND TOIL. 

Pullman Palace Car Company. Between five and six 
thousand men are employed, four-fifths of whom are in 
the employ of the Pullman Company. The value of 
their products can only be measured- by millions of dol- 
lars. Its success as a manufacturing centre is unques- 
tioned. With this phase of its existence we are not 
concerned. The question is, Is Pullman a success from 
the stand-point of the employ^? Has it furnished a 
satisfactory solution of the industrial problem of to-day ? 
While filling the coffers of its projector, is it elevating 
and enriching the lives wearing away in toil in its shops 
and factories? To answer these questions aright one 
must measure Pullman by an ideal standard, for it was 
the boast of its founder that he would give a practical 
existence to ideal conditions in the building and main- 
taining of his new community. There is but one test 
to be applied to any social system ; if it fails to meet the 
requirements of that test, it has been weighed in the 
balance and found wanting. That test is, Does it so 
place each individual that he can share in and enjoy to 
the extent of his natural capacity the privileges and 
advantages of the existing civilization ? 

In Pullman, perhaps to a greater extent than else- 
where in this country, unstinted provision has been 
made for the material comfort of the dwellers therein. 
The employes occupy houses that are, as a rule, tasteful 
in construction and models in neatness ; the streets are 
kept in perfect condition, with a row of shade-trees on 
each side, giving them a pleasant and picturesque ap- 
pearance ; simple but ingenious designs secure a striking 
variety of architecture in the houses, which are built in 



AN IDEAL INDUSTRIAL COMMUNITY. 185 

groups of two or more or in blocks. Public squares, 
hotels, arcades, markets, miniature lakes, a stretch of 
meadow or a cluster of trees are most happily distrib- 
uted to relieve the monotony of long rows of buildings. 
Rents are moderate. There is a public library, — not a 
free one. Three dollars a year pays for the privilege of 
reading such of its eight thousand volumes as the artisan 
may select. The public-school system is permitted to 
give educational facilities for the children of the em- 
ployes, provided the trustees rent a building of the 
Pullman Company to be used as a school-house," — the 
only instance in the United States where a corporation 
nullifies that (or any other) provision of the public- 
school law which requires the trustees to erect suitable 
buildings in which schools shall be taught. The Pull- 
man Company owns and controls everything. The 
livery stables, the hotel, the theatre, the fire depart- 
ment, all are the property of the company. No pri- 
vate person can own a foot of ground or a single 
building. The oligarchy will not even permit the 
erection of a church ; religious organizations desiring 
to hold meetings must do so in rented quarters. There 
is no Lord's acre here.* Every municipal act is the 
act of a corporation. It is a village within the village 
of Hyde Park, and the latter seeks to exercise no au- 
thority over its territory. Members of the various 
Pullmanized corporations fill many of the principal 



* Kecently a church society succeeded in purchasing from this 
corporation ground upon which to erect a church-edifice, but this 
building-site is located outside the town. 

16* 



186 TENURE AND TOIL. 

offices of Hyde Park village, including that of school 
trustee. 

We have here millions of dollars expended in sur- 
rounding wage-workers with beauty and comfort. But 
every dollar is so invested as to return a handsome profit 
to its owners. There is naught philanthropic in the 
entire experiment. Everything is conceived in a busi- 
ness spirit, conducted upon purely business principles, 
and made a source of revenue to the projectors. The 
wages paid are the ruling prices for such labor. Steady 
employment and prompt pay are always assured. 
Faithful and skilful hands are specially cared for. 
Employes who chance to suffer loss of limb or any other 
physical misfortune are provided with such tasks as 
they can perform. In many ways thus are the physi- 
cal wants and conditions provided for and satisfied. 
Every device that the ingenuity of man can invent or 
suggest is employed by the owners to so completely 
meet the demands for material comfort and attractive 
surroundings that their employes, with their physical 
senses cloyed, will feel no stirring impulse within for 
social, moral, or mental growth that might breed dis- 
content. But while this scrupulous attention to ma- 
terial details which so strongly combine to enhance the 
physical comfort of man is most admirable in conception 
and perfect in execution, yet there are phases of Pull- 
man life that must be admitted are not only unpleasant, 
but which unfit a man to fully understand the obliga- 
tions, perform the duties, and share the responsibilities 
of American citizenship. 



THE PULLMAN ARTISAN A TENANT AT WILL. 187 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE PULLMAN ARTISAN A TENANT AT WILL. 

There is frequent change of men and of officers, and 
each new incumbent has his chosen friends to reward. 
Favoritism should have no place in an ideal community. 
The evils incident to such a condition necessarily exist 
here, such as petty jealousies, displacement and dis- 
couragement of superior capacity, constant changing of 
residents, and a general feeling of insecurity. The idea 
of home — that idea the incarnation of which, in man's 
life, is essential to his true development and happiness 
— finds no association with the name of Pullman. The 
people dwell in houses not their own, and their tenure 
subject to termination at ten days' notice, a condition 
embodied in the lease, the corporation reserving the 
right to cancel that lease even though the rent may 
have been paid in advance for a longer period than the 
time of notice stipulated. Is not this in contravention 
of the law fixing and maintaining the relative rights of 
landlord and tenant ? The rent may be paid in the 
forenoon of the first day of the month, in the afternoon 
the decree is promulgated that notices be issued to the 
tenants to vacate in ten days. In this connection we 
must not forget that about eighty per cent, of the laborers 
are in the employ of the corporation in control of this 
petty kingdom, and all the others are employed in es- 
tablishments which are under its influence. Such an 



188 TENURE AND TOIL. 

absolute extinction of individuality and such an utter 
absorption of that individuality by a capitalistic organ- 
ization is without approach or parallel in the history of 
any other modern civilized community. In many re- 
spects the power of the Russian Czar pales into utter in- 
significance in comparison with the power of the close 
corporation which rules at Pullman. Can it be said that 
that power is always rightfully exercised ? Man is not 
perfect, though his coffers be filled with shekels and 
he be knighted by the king of Italy. That power is 
there ; the only escape from it is emigration. Within 
the limits of this ideal (?), social, and industrial realm es- 
cape from the all-pervading influence of the corporation 
is impossible. 

Many grievances exist, many acts of injustice occur, 
but no one dare utter a cry for help or redress. The 
laborers at Pullman believe that " spotters" — paid 
eavesdroppers of the company — mingle with them to 
catch and report to their masters any sign or word ex- 
pressive of disapproval or criticism of the actions of the 
authorities. 

Pullman is the only community of ten thousand peo- 
ple in the United States that has not a newspaper pub- 
lished within its limits. The freedom of the press here 
would be limited to the promulgation and approval of 
the decrees and dogmas of the powers that be. 

What a spectacle ! Ten thousand people in utter 
subjection to the avaricious cupidity and limitless power 
of a dozen men organized and co-operating together as 
one man, who own a pseudo-city, exempt from muni- 
cipal burdens and responsibilities. Not a single man 



THE PULLMAN ARTISAN A TENANT AT WILL. 189 

of all that ten thousand dare express an opinion about 
the affairs of the community in which he dwells. These 
conditions of existence beget a servility little less than 
slavery, a dependence that is moral weakness and men- 
tal degradation. There is a culpable lack of attention 
in the meagre provisions for religious instruction. The 
seating capacity of the halls is insufficient for the ac- 
commodation of the people, and the rental demanded is 
so high that it is with great difficulty any religious 
denomination can pay it. The company, with an eye 
single to its own selfish purposes, provides shelter 
and meat for the body, but maketh no provision for 
manna for the soul. The soul cannot forge a bolt or 
line a boiler. 

No public meetings are ever held in which the citi- 
zens could discuss local affairs, and give expression to 
that responsibility for things done and not done which 
constitute a practical education in the duties of citizen- 
ship, and give opportunity for the development of a 
capacity equal to the higher conditions and greater 
trusts, — that is, the practical culture which develops 
the desire and capacity for self-government is unknown. 
The individual is environed with restraints and restric- 
tions, unable to do anything for his own material, 
social, or political advancement, and thus his very 
entity as an integral part of that community suffers 
extinction. 

The one desire that is clearer to an American citizen 
than all others, the desire to have and hold a home, 
finds no expression at Pullman. The industry and 
economy so necessary to the acquisition of that home 



190 TENURE AND TOIL. 

become the corner-stones of a career of peace and 
plenty. Besides, the owner of a home is a guardian of 
the safety and perpetuity of the community in which 
he lives. Home-owners are never malcontents. They 
are a safeguard against social disturbances and indus- 
trial revolts. Everything in Pullman must belong to 
and be a part of the corporation. 

The power of the capitalists who conceived and con- 
trol this community is limitless, and the wrong-burdened 
history of the world has long ago taught, with all the 
unction of the divine decree, that no class of men are 
fit to be trusted with unlimited and irresponsible author- 
ity. In the exercise of such power man is prone to 
yield to the temptation to abuse it. Moreover, the 
subject of such absolute authority becomes servile and 
degraded, and he who wields it corrupt and shame- 
less. 

In Pullman we find a condition which establishes, in 
fact, only under a new form, the degrading relation of 
lord and vassal, which is utterly abhorrent to the ad- 
vanced humanity of the age, and utterly subversive 
of every correct principle of true manhood and true 
womanhood. This relationship should be abolished, 
and in its stead a co-operation of some kind or another 
established, which will conduce to the growth and 
development of the mental and moral nature of man 
as well as the physical. 

Compare, — nay, there is no comparison,— but the 
contrast is striking and suggestive between the spirit- 
less, propertyless dependent, toiling in the workshops 
at Pullman, and the fearless and independent com- 



THE PULLMAN ARTISAN A TENANT AT WILL. 191 

id oner of the Swiss Canton. The one will breed a 
race of slaves, the other beget a nation of heroes. 

If the founders of Pullman, with minds imbued 
with the teachings of a true political philosophy and a 
conscience quickened by the desire to ameliorate and 
elevate the condition of their workmen, had, in the 
organization of their industrial experiment, subordi- 
nated the physical comfort of the laborer to his social 
improvement and moral development, the evils, which 
we find inherent and active, and which will eventually 
work its destruction or the enslavement of the laborer, 
could have had no existence in this community. Pro- 
vision ought to have been made (1) that the workman 
could have the opportunity of buying the house which 
he now rents, and the sum which he pays as rental 
each month been taken as a partial payment upon the 
purchase-price. Attached to each house should have 
been at least one acre of ground upon which the laborer 
could have grown fruit and vegetables for his family. 
(2) That he could look forward to promotion in the 
line of his work as an incentive to and a just reward of 
fixed terms of faithful service : each promotion bring- 
ing an increase of wages. (3) That he could share in 
the net profits arising from the combination of his labor 
with the capital of the corporation. 

A recognition of the natural right of man to own 
property, to work out his own elevation, and to share in 
the products of his own labor is vital to the safety and 
perpetuity of any industrial or political system. 



192 TENURE AND TOIL. 



CHAPTER VII. 

ACTION DEMANDED. WHAT SHALL IT BE? 

No system of legislation, the enforcement of which 
would compulsorily deprive the individual of his pro- 
prietary rights, can be devised that will not meet with 
opposition. But since it is admitted on all hands that 
deep-seated grievances exist among the masses of the 
people, — whether justly or unjustly it matters not, — 
arising from the unequal distribution of wealth and 
from the accumulation of property in the hands of the 
few,- and when it is also admitted that these grievances 
are growing to such an extent that, if something is not 
done to remedy them, serious disturbances, destructive 
of property and detrimental to the well-being of society, 
may ensue, it is time for men of wealth and property 
to pause and wisely consider what means to adopt to 
avert these impending calamities. The grievances 
existing among the laboring people must be remedied 
in some reasonable way. They cannot be remedied by 
brute force. That was resorted to in France, but when 
the critical moment arrived, the clergy and nobility 
discovered to their sorrow that the military, who were 
of the people, sympathized with the people. A hand- 
ful of armed detectives, or the militia, may succeed for 
a time in overawing and bringing to terms a few 
striking factory or railroad hands, but this agitation 



ACTION DEMANDED. WHAT SHALL IT BE? 193 

and unrest among the people will not down. Apply- 
ing brute force only adds fuel to the fire. The tears of 
women and appeals of children who are suffering from 
exposure and famishing from hunger cannot be silenced 
or appeased with bludgeons and shot-guns. They 
can be appeased and silenced only by bread and clothes. 
Will men of wealth and property afford them the means 
of acquiring these simple necessaries, or wait until they 
take them ? Remember that want and suffering and 
hunger are elements more dangerous to toy with or 
handle than gunpowder, Greek fire, or dynamite. Re- 
member the lesson of the French revolution. Remem- 
ber that it is much safer to render it possible for the de- 
serving poor to earn and enjoy a little from your abun- 
dance than, in the withholding from them this chance of 
living, drive them into the ranks of the viciously idle, 
who look upon property as the pauper's prey, and thus 
imperil your all. How shall these deep-seated griev- 
ances of the people be remedied without at the same time 
doing great injustice to the rights of property ? Henry 
George says, Abolish private property in land. Herr 
Most would throttle the law, destroy the government, 
and divide the spoils. These are extreme measures, and 
while both are rapidly gaining many adherents, the 
capitalists remain passive and inactive, without turning 
a hand or suggesting a measure to off-set these danger- 
ous doctrines. 

Men who write books or write for the press or who 
make political speeches — the men who influence and 
create public opinion — are, as a rule, men of compara- 
tively limited means, with but little experience in the 

1 n 17 



194 TENURE AND TOIL. 

practical affairs of life. Aware of this fact, the writer 
addressed letters of inquiry to men of eminence and ex- 
perience in railroad and manufacturing circles, hoping 
to elicit from them practical information which he 
might use to advantage in the preparation of this work, 
but the usual answer was, u I have no time to consider 
the subject-matter of your inquiry." So that the same 
complaint which is made against our wealthiest citizens 
who do not take sufficient interest in the government 
to vote on election day may be urged against the capi- 
talists who refuse to impart practical information to 
men who devote time and who give their best thought 
to the development of economic and legislative sub- 
jects calculated to benefit society. A man who knows 
nothing about railroading or the relative duties and 
obligations of the company and its hands cannot be 
expected to suggest an economic measure or law which 
would be as beneficial for all concerned in that branch of 
industry as the late T. J. Potter, who was probably the 
most thoroughly equipped railroad man of this genera- 
tion. A man who has had no experience in manufac- 
turing cannot be expected to suggest a measure or to 
propose a law which would be as far-reaching and bene- 
ficial in its effects in regard to the relative rights and 
duties of manufacturers and their employes as Andrew 
J. Carnegie. The man of practical experience, who 
deals honestly and fairly with the subject, should be 
able to suggest measures or devise and formulate a 
system of laws of eminent utility, while the man lack- 
ing such experience can only deal with the subject as he 
sees it from a study of the philosophy of the effects pro- 



ACTION DEMANDED. WHAT SHALL IT BE? 195 

duced. If the latter does not meet the full measure of 
expectations, he should not be blamed or censured on 
that account. As we cannot look for perfection in hu- 
man laws or institutions, any system proposed looking 
to radical changes in the existing order of things must 
necessarily encounter opposition. The most that any 
writer can hope for or expect is that the ideas which he 
advances and the suggestions which he makes, however 
objectionable they may seem in the concrete, possess 
elements which, when subjected to the test of practical 
common sense, may lead society to advance a step in the 
accomplishment of good results. The great and lasting 
effects which have proved most beneficial to mankind 
were not produced by sudden or spasmodic efforts, but 
by slow, gradual, and successive steps sanctioned by ex- 
perience and justified by results. 

It is universally conceded, because attested by the 
experience of ages, that the stability and durability of 
government and the happiness and well-being of society 
are best secured when the great bulk of the property is 
in the hands of peasant proprietors, — owned and con- 
trolled by the subordinate holders of power; and any 
economic measure or system of laws which will accom- 
plish the distribution of property among the people 
without doing great injustice to its present owners must 
be regarded as one step in advance, looking to a happy 
medium between the extremes of the socialistic theory 
and the existing system. I am not unmindful of the 
fact that any common laborer may pull down an old 
building, but that it requires a skilful artisan to re- 
construct it. In the suggestions which I advance in 



196 TENURE AND TOIL. 

these pages, I trust the thoughtful reader will credit 
me with at least furnishing- the materials for building: 
a system better than that which I would destroy. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE STATE HAS WROUGHT THE RUIN. LET HER 
SUPPLY THE REMEDY. 

The remedy for the grievances of which the labor- 
ing classes now so justly complain can be found only 
in legislation. The greater number of our Western 
railways were built by means of subsidies in lands and 
bonds given to them by States and municipalities, — 
subsidies which, whether used as securities or con- 
verted into cash, were not only sufficient to build and 
equip the road, but, in addition, to furnish a princely 
fortune for division among the projectors. But though 
so richly dowered at the public expense in the very 
inception of their enterprise, their insatiate greed for 
gain prompted the organization of construction com- 
panies, composed of the officers of the railway company 
and a few outside speculators, to whom the contract 
was let for building the road. A corporation within a 
corporation, — nominally and legally (?) distinct, yet 
actually and morally the same. These alter-egos of 
the railroad companies stood as the middlemen between 
them and the laborers who built the road, relieving the 



THE STATE HAS WROUGHT THE RUIN. 197 

former of all legal liability, while they robbed the 
latter of their hard-earned wages. 

The State is largely responsible for the frauds per- 
petrated upon the unsuspecting public by speculators 
and confidence-men in enabling them to issue corporate 
stocks, bearing, so to speak, the great seal of a sover- 
eign State, which, when thus used, was a badge of 
fraud, as the stocks were, in fact, worthless. The 
State is responsible, partially at least, if not wholly, 
for the manner in which many of these corporations 
have passed from the hands of the stockholders into 
the exclusive control or possession of a Gould or a 
Yanderbilt. The State, through a receiver appointed 
by its courts, has not only taken possession, but under- 
took to operate these roads in the interest of a few 
bondholders and wreckers, who, by means of fore- 
closure-proceedings, secured all the property. These 
spoliators, operating under corporate authority and 
protected by perverted laws, are the moneyed barons of 
to-day, who, through the pernicious power inherent in 
their colossal wealth, endanger the perpetuity of the 
republic. The State is responsible for the legalized 
rapine by which the people have been despoiled of 
their heritage — the public domain — in giving it to 
corporations and selling it to speculators. Unfor- 
tunately, too often judges, jurors, and other court 
officials are bought and sold like sheep in the shambles ; 
the foul imprint of bribery is stamped upon many a 
corporate act of legislation ; all subservient tools in in- 
flicting the most gigantic wrongs and perpetrating the 
most unblushing frauds upon the people. The State 

17* 



198 TENURE AND TOIL. 

is responsible for the whiskey trusts, tobacco trusts, 
coffee trusts, sugar trusts, bread trusts, oil trusts, coal 
trusts, and gas trusts, which are combinations most foul 
to monopolize trade, regulate production, increase 
values, and crush unorganized competition. The 
organization of these trusts, being hostile to the best 
interests of society, ought to be prevented by making 
it a felony for individuals or the officers of corpora- 
tions to enter into any such combination. The State is 
responsible for laws which make it possible for 
schemers and sharpers to drive out of business old and 
respected citizens who, through long years of honest 
industry and fair dealing, had built up a lucrative 
trade and gained the confidence of their creditors and 
neighbors. Honest business men cannot compete with 
the unscrupulous who sell their wares twenty-five per 
cent, below cost, and who, after placing the proceeds of 
their rascality beyond the reach of creditors, go into 
bankruptcy or make a sham assignment, and in a few 
days thereafter resume business as agents of their wives 
or mothers-in-law. It is the fault of the State that the 
wheels of traffic are now blocked, that business is de- 
moralized, that thousands of men are out of work, and 
millions of dollars lost through the obstinacy of a rail- 
road magnate on the one hand, or of a labor boss on 
the other. The State is responsible for the existence of 
all social and political conditions which work injury to 
the great body politic when it is within the power of 
the State, by legislation, to render such existence im- 
possible, or to punish the conspirators who combine to 
bring about such conditions. The conditions referred 



COMPENSATE EMPLOYES, ETC. 199 

to, with many others of a kindred nature, are the true 
causes of the direful discontent and dangerous unrest 
now pervading the masses, and it behooves the State, if 
it would save itself, to at once set about the removal 
of these causes by a wise, yet radical and far-reaching, 
system of legislation. 



CHAPTER IX. 

COMPENSATE EMPLOYES INJURED BY DEFECTIVE 
MACHINERY. 

The daily calendar of injuries and deaths occasioned 
by defective machinery in the great trade-centres, and 
the record of the law's vexatious delays when it is in- 
voked to secure reparation, even in the most merito- 
rious cases, are most condemnatory exposures of criminal 
negligence of employers of labor, fostered and relieved 
by the iniquitous tardiness of justice, — a stigma and a 
shame to our boasted civilization. Paramount to all 
ethical considerations, however, there are at the very 
root of these pernicious conditions grave questions of 
State polity and State economy which deserve and 
demand serious thought and earnest action. It is 
safe to assume that three-fourths of the persons injured 
by defective machinery are the stay and support of 
others, — wives, children, younger sisters and brothers, 
or aged and infirm parents. It is equally true that the 
same proportion of those injured are unable, financially, 



200 TENURE AND TOIL. 

to provide that care and attention at their own home 
necessary for their comfort and recovery, and must 
therefore be sent to the county hospital and cared for 
at the public expense, thus taxing the people to pay for 
the consequences of the employer's negligence. When 
those hands, perforce, are idle whose toil brought food, 
raiment, and shelter to others, what fate befalls the 
helpless dependents? Call the rolls of the houses of 
correction, the poor-houses, the asylums, and the county 
jails, and you will find full answer, — an answer fraught 
with reproach and rebuke to justice and humanity. 
The many and marvellous mechanical combinations 
wrought by the inventive genius of to-day, in the form 
of labor-saving machinery, compelling rapid construc- 
tion and frequent changes, render these accidents almost 
inevitable, unless the utmost skill and most vigilant 
care are exercised in making and maintaining each and 
every part of such machinery. Courts of justice, in- 
stead of laying down a just and equitable principle of 
law for the determination of these cases, which would 
stimulate the men who employ dangerous machinery in 
operating their business to an exercise of constant and 
critical vigilance in avoiding danger, and providing 
safety for their employes, have formulated a rule which 
encourages their indifference, and places a premium 
upon negligence, — that is, the law, as interpreted by the 
courts, relieves the employer from liability for injuries 
received by his employe while working with or about 
defective machinery if the employe* knows the ma- 
chinery is defective ; and if he continues his work with- 
out being induced by his master to believe that a change 



COMPENSATE EMPLOYES, ETC. 201 

will be made, he is held to have assumed the risk. 
Under this rule, the injustice of which is equalled only 
by its absurdity, the more defective and worthless the 
machinery the less liable is the employer for injuries 
inflicted upon the employ^.* Many an honest work- 
man, compelled to earn a livelihood for those dependent 
upon him by his daily toil, with an unselfishness that 
is heroic, recks not the hazard to his own life, in per- 
forming his allotted task, when its abandonment would 
deprive his family of the necessaries of life. Is it 
right, is it just, is it humane, to drive the toiler with 
the lash of necessity to a task fraught with peril, and 
because, forsooth, he knows the danger, deny him com- 
pensation for injuries thereby received, which disable 
him perchance for life ? 

The labor which he performs is for the benefit of a 
private enterprise, instituted and operated for individual 
gain. The employers, not the public, profit by the ser- 
vices, yet, perforce, through the rulings of our courts, the 
public must bear the burden of supporting his family 
and himself when his inability to supply that support is 
occasioned by negligence of his employer. Why should 
the public, having received no revenue from the ser- 
vices of the laborer, relieve the employer, who has 



* During the last two sessions of the Illinois Legislature, the 
author prepared bills providing for the abrogation of this heinous 
rule, and the enactment of just and humane procedure for such 
cases. These bills were sent to members, who admitted the ne- 
cessity of some such legislation, yet, so far as the writer is ad- 
vised, they were never considered by that body nor any of a like 
character. 



202 TENURE AND TOIL. 

profited by his toil, of the expensive consequences re- 
sulting from that employer's negligence ? Why should 
not the workman have and receive adequate compen- 
sation for injuries inflicted? And why should he not 
receive that compensation immediately upon the occur- 
rence of the accident, for it is then when his necessities 
require it as much, if not more, than ten years after- 
wards ? Does he get it ? No : the State seems to be 
the father of the employer, and the foster-father of the 
employe. All the machinery of the courts is put in 
motion and resort had to the many evasions and delays 
of the law to hinder and hamper the latter in his efforts 
to obtain simple justice. Able lawyers, schooled in 
craft and bristling with technicalities, — those resorts of 
conscious wrong when seeking to elude the clutches of 
the law, — are employed by the year upon princely 
salaries to defend the case. Shrewd and unscrupulous 
detectives, many of them ex-convicts or fugitives from 
justice, are hired to hunt up and suborn witnesses for 
the defence, to intimidate or buy off witnesses for the 
plaintiff, and to bribe impecunious or dishonest jurors. 
Continuance after continuance is prayed for and granted 
upon one pretext or another. After the cause is tried, 
a verdict rendered, and judgment entered, the defendant 
appeals to the higher courts. The trial judge omitted to 
dot an i or cross a t in his instructions to the jury, and 
for some technical error of this kind the cause is reversed 
and remanded. When the remandant order is filed a 
motion may be made to transfer the case to the Federal 
court in order to gain more time. An order of transfer 
is had, and the defendant's attorney has about six months 



THE REMEDY; ITS ECONOMY, ETC. 203 

to file the record in the latter court. Thereafter a motion 
is made to remand the case to the State court, which is 
granted, as a matter of course, because the application 
for the transfer was a fraud on the court in the first 
place. Six months more are consumed before the case 
comes on for trial. By that time the witnesses of plain- 
tiff are probably spirited away, or the plaintiff takes a 
change of venue to a court where wicked railroad 
lawyers are unknown, where detectives and jury-bribers 
shall enter not therein. 

The writer has a case in mind, which is not by any 
means exceptional, where an employe" of a railroad lost 
his arm in an accident, and it was thirteen years from 
date of the accident to the time the last opinion of the 
supreme court sustaining the judgment which he re- 
covered was filed. Hundreds of similar cases might 
be cited in support of the proposition that the remedy 
afforded in this class of cases is in effect no remedy at 
all. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE KEMEDY; ITS ECONOMY AND BENEFICENCE. 

Any thinking man who will take upon himself the 
trouble of investigating this matter must be convinced 
that if railway companies, and all other corporations and 
individuals who employ men at and around dangerous 
machinery, were compelled by law to pay every em- 
ploye" injured in their employment a fixed sum based 



204 TENURE AND TOIL. 

upon the nature and extent of the injury, that it would 
cost them little more than it now does to pay lawyers, 
detectives, witnesses, and court costs. This is leaving 
out of view altogether the amount which comes out of 
the pockets of tax-payers to furnish and maintain a 
hospital for the care and treatment of the injured, and 
a poor-house for the support of their dependants. 

In the official proceedings of the Board of Super- 
visors of Cook County, making appropriations to meet 
the expenditures for the year 1888, 1 find the following 
items : 

For Salaries, county agent's office |8,000 

" Supplies, rent and transportation 12,000 

" Salaries, poor-house 20,000 

" Supplies and repairs 95,000 

11 Salaries, county hospital 50,000 

" Supplies and repairs 125,000 

" Out-door relief, county towns 25,000 

$335,000 

making a total of $335,000 to be expended in feeding 
the poor and in the treatment and care of the sick of 
Cook County. I find also that $545,910 is appro- 
priated to meet the expenses of the different courts of 
record of Cook County, including the sheriff's office, 
but not including the probate or county court or salaries 
of the county clerks. Any one having the time and in- 
clination to ascertain the number of days in the year 
that are spent in the trial of personal injury cases, the 
number of this class of patients received at the hospital, 
and the number of poor people relieved by the county 
agent or housed at the county poor-house, will be able 



THE REMEDY; ITS ECONOMY, ETC. 205 

to demonstrate to a mathematical certainty, if such 
demonstration be deemed necessary, that it would be 
wisdom on the part of the State as a public measure 
to pass a law compelling speedy and adequate compen- 
sation to be made to employes who are injured in the 
line of their employment. The State makes laws pun- 
ishing usury. Is it more of an offence for a money- 
shark to charge five or ten per cent, a month than it is 
for a corporation to maim and kill its employes by the 
use of rotten or defective machinery ? No one would 
pay the brazen usurer five or ten per cent, a month for 
the use of money unless driven to do so from dire ne- 
cessity. No workman would risk his life at or about 
machinery which he knew to be defective unless driven 
to do so from absolute need. It should be, and it is 
supposed to be, the object of the law to protect those 
who are unable to protect themselves, but the rule is 
reversed in regard to employes injured from defective 
machinery. The remedy which I should adopt would 
at once compensate the person injured, decrease litiga- 
tion in our courts, relieve the tax-payer, and convert 
the blood-money now wasted in employing lawyers, 
paying detectives, suborning witnesses, and bribing 
jurors into bread-money. It is this : When an em- 
ploye* is injured by machinery while at work in the 
line of his duty, let the fact of the injury be taken as 
prima facie evidence that the machinery was defective, 
and compel the employer to pay $2000 for the loss of 
one hand or foot, $4000 for the loss of both hands, 
both feet, or one hand and one foot, $1500 for the loss 
of an eye, $4000 for the loss of both eyes, $12 a wee'k 

18 



206 TENURE AND TOIL. 

for disabling injuries of a temporary nature, $5000 
for a permanent injury, and $5000 to the widow or 
next of kin in the event of his death.* 

It may be urged that legislation similar to that 
here proposed would have a tendency to make men 
careless, and even induce some to intentionally inflict 
injury upon themselves, but such contention is a pitiable 
plea in avoidance. No sane man would inflict injury 
upon himself in order to obtain the pecuniary con- 
sideration provided for the loss and suffering he would 
sustain any more than the man who is insured will com- 
mit suicide to secure the insurance. The fact that a 
few have taken their own life, declaring beforehand 
their purpose to compel the insurance company to pay 
their life insurance, even if true, is not a controlling 
argument against the adoption of the plan proposed. 

The act of suicide is the act of insanity. Could we 
trace the lineage or have revealed to us the inner life 
of every suicide, we would find proof strong as the 
confirmation of holy writ of their insanity inherited 
from some ancestor of clouded brain, or wrought by 
some carking care or sorrow grim, borne in shadow 
and silence until it drove them to their death. 

If injury be voluntarily or intentionally inflicted, no 



* The respective sums suggested may be deemed far below the 
true measure of damages. The author's plan of procedure con- 
templates immediate payment without suit, hence the employe or 
his representative would not have to pay costs of court or lawyer's 
fees, and the net amount realized by him would equal, if not 
exceed, that which he now recovers at suit under most favorable 
conditions. 



ENFORCE THE PROMPT PAYMENT OF WAGES. 207 

compensation should be paid ; in such case let the 
burden of proof rest upon the defendant, and if his 
plea is not well-founded, compel him to pay attorney's 
fees and expenses sufficient to compensate the plaintiff 
for time lost and money expended in litigation.* The 
employer may easily protect himself by insuring his 
employes against accident in accident insurance com- 
panies, at the trifling cost of about fifteen dollars a year 
for each employe^ or by the creation of a fund, where 
such is practicable, for the purpose. 



CHAPTER XI. 

ENFOECE THE PEOMPT PAYMENT OF WAGES. 

When one contemplates the cost and delay of justice, 
he is inclined to commend the wisdom of Solon in 
promulgating a law which declared all debtors dis- 
charged and acquitted of all their debts. To gain some 
definite idea of the number of civil cases commenced 
and the cost of litigation in the justices' courts of Chi- 
cago, the writer ascertained the number of civil cases 
commenced in the year 1887 before one justice in each 

* No plan can be adopted which will wholly do away with 
litigation. The method suggested will materially diminish the 
number of suits for damages arising from personal injuries as the 
burden of proof is cast upon the employer, or, in other words, he is 
held to the responsibility of an insurer, and if he fails in the suit 
he is liable for all costs and expenses incident thereto. 



208 TENURE AND TOIL. 

division of the city. The number commenced before 
the South Side justice was 2645, and as there are seven 
justices in this division, by taking 2000 as the average, 
the total number would be 14,000 cases. The number 
commenced before the West Side justice was 1953, and 
as there are six justices in this division, by taking 1500 
as the average, the total number would be 9000 cases. 
The number commenced before the North Side justice 
was 1200, and as there are five justices in this division, 
by taking this number as the average, the total would 
be 6000 cases, making the total for the entire city 
29,000. The average cost in these cases, including 
constables' fees, is not less than $3.00 a case, which 
would make a total cost of $87,000. Out of every 
thousand of these, there are about thirty appeals to the 
higher courts, at an average cost, including the appear- 
ance fee of the defendant, of $9.50, to which may be added 
an average attorney's fee of $10.00, making a total sum 
of $16,695. Estimating the amount paid attorneys 
in justices' courts at an average of $1.00 per case, 
which is a minimum price, certainly for professional 
skill, and calculating the money-value of the time lost 
to litigants and their witnesses, which would not be less 
than $3.00 a case, the aggregate cost of this petty 
litigation exceeds $200,000 annually. At least sev- 
enty-five per cent, of the above litigation was occa- 
sioned by suits for the collection of petty accounts 
and for wages justly due. Of the former class, it 
may be truly said that they seldom serve any other 
purpose than to increase the indebtedness of the poor ; 
and of the latter class, that even when successful, the 



ENFORCE THE PROMPT PAYMENT OF WAGES. 209 

laborer finds the cost of collection but little less than 
the earnings of his toil. Would not the community 
be the gainer if all actions of debt, except for wage.-, 
were abolished ? 

Honest men, however poor, experience little difficulty 
in obtaining credit from their grocers, bakers, and butch- 
ers, and if actions for debt were abolished, to obtain 
credit would not only be an incentive to honesty, but 
honesty would become a necessity. Should a man wish 
to change his residence from one city to another, he 
would provide himself with credentials for honesty, at- 
tested by the signatures of his grocer, baker, and butcher. 
What better or more honorable letters of credit could 
a man have? True, if such were the law, lawyers, judges, 
justices of the peace, and town constables would be at 
a discount. But matters would soon adjust themselves 
in such a way that the supernumeraries in these pro- 
fessions would find some other visible means of support, 
which would contribute to, instead of detract from, the 
peace and prosperity of the community. 

One of the justices who furnished the above statistics 
called attention to two judgments of three dollars each, 
one procured by a chambermaid and the other by a 
washer-woman, and both judgments had been appealed 
to the higher court by the defendants. While the 
amounts of these judgments were exceptionally small, 
it not unfrequently happens that appeals are prosecuted 
in this class of cases in order to defeat justice or to 
gratify petty malice. Poor men and women are not 
able to hire lawyers to prosecute their cases in the 
higher courts, and as a consequence they are compelled, 
o 18* 



210 TENURE AND TOIL. 

in many instances, to lose their just claims. Indeed, it 
is cheaper for one to abandon his claim than to follow 
his case to any higher court to which it has been appealed, 
unless the amount involved is considerable, for when 
he pays his attorney and counts his loss of time, even 
if successful, he has but won a barren victory. 

The legislature should provide for the payment of 
attorneys' fees and adequate damages to compensate the 
plaintiff for all time lost by him in the prosecution of 
this class of cases. That it has the power to do so is 
unquestioned; that it has so long delayed the exercise 
of that power is a shame. 

Manufacturing and railway companies usually pay 
their men monthly or fortnightly, and if a man is dis- 
charged from service between two pay-days he must 
wait until the pay-day succeeding his discharge for his 
wages. It is only those persons who have witnessed 
the inconveniences arising from a system of discharging 
men without paying them who can fully appreciate its 
rank injustice to those directly affected thereby. The 
days of worthless construction companies have doubt- 
less in a great measure disappeared, but in order to pre- 
vent a repetition of the wrongs which they perpetrated 
by any other corporation or individual, the law should 
provide that upon the discharge of any person from 
employment, his employer shall pay him the amount 
of wages to which he is entitled. As it might be im- 
possible to pay cash under all circumstances, the lav/ 
should provide that in such cases the employer or his 
representative shall forthwith issue a time-check to 
the discharged workman showing the number of days 



ENFORCE THE PROMPT PAYMENT OF WAGES. 211 

which he has worked, the day of his discharge count- 
ing as one full day, and the amount per day to which 
he is entitled. These time-checks should constitute 
evidence of the indebtedness payable upon demand, — a 
demand upon any agent or officer to suffice. Failure 
or neglect of the employer or his representative to pay 
such wages in cash, or to issue a time-check to the party 
entitled thereto as herein provided, shall render him 
liable to a penalty of one hundred dollars, to be recov- 
ered in an action of debt for the use of the school-fund 
in any court of record of the county, and shall also 
render him liable in the sum of five dollars a day for 
each and every day he shall fail or neglect to make 
such cash payment or to issue such time-check ; the 
latter sum to be recovered by the employe in a sum- 
mary proceeding before any justice of the peace of the 
county. 

When the time-check herein provided for shall have 
been issued, fifty per cent, shall be added to the face 
value thereof, and the sum thus made shall bear interest 
at the rate of ten per cent, per annum until paid. Such 
time-checks shall pass by assignment and delivery, and 
shall be freed from all defences, the same as commercial 
paper purchased for a valuable consideration before 
maturity, and the owner and holder of any such check 
shall be entitled to maintain an action upon the same, 
and to recover judgment in his own name against the 
individual or corporation issuing the same. All actions 
upon such time-checks shall have precedence over other 
civil suits, and all checks owned and held by the 
party at the time the action was commenced shall be 



212 TENURE AND TOIL. 

united in one suit. In addition to the amount re- 
covered in any such action, not less than five nor more 
than fifty dollars attorney's fee shall be allowed by the 
court, such attorney's fee to be taxed as costs of the ac- 
tion. In enforcing the payment of such judgment no 
property belonging to the corporation or individual shall 
be exempt from execution. 

In many of the States imprisonment for debt has been 
abolished by constitutional provisions, so that the only 
way of compelling the prompt cash payment of wages 
is to make a refusal to pay it so onerous that an em- 
ployer will provide for paying the same before discharg- 
ing his employ^. There is no controlling reason why a 
penalty of the nature suggested should not be as applica- 
ble in the case of non-payment of wages as in the case of 
the non-payment of taxes. There is no provision in 
any of the State constitutions with which such a law 
would conflict. The penalty which attaches to the non- 
payment of taxes is upheld from considerations of pub- 
lic policy. Similar considerations may legitimately be 
appealed to in support of the law proposed. 

I am well aware of the fact that such suggestions 
will hardly receive serious consideration when official 
position has largely become a matter of barter and sale. 
But if the wage-workers of the country demand that 
some legislative measure be adopted whereby prompt 
payment of wages shall be enforced, policy may impel 
one or other of the leading political parties to pledge 
itself to support such a measure. 



BOOK V. 

* LIMITATION OF OWNERSHIP AND PROHIBITION 

OF TRUSTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

UNEARNED INCREMENT. 

It is conceded that no radical changes can be adopted 
affecting the title or right of property in the hands of 
its present holders so as to deprive them thereof without 
just compensation. This is the guarantee of the Consti- 
tution of the United States as it is written and ordina- 
rily understood, but by the construction placed upon that 
instrument by the Supreme Court of the United States 
in the recent Kansas brewery cases, it would seem that 
any legislation which has for its apparent object the cor- 
rection of abuses detrimental to society may be upheld, 
provided the persons directly affected thereby shall not 
be absolutely deprived of their property. Since I can- 
not sanction laws nor approve decisions, no matter by 
what court rendered, which, in the spirit if not in the 
letter, violate the great fundamental principles of the 
constitution, I should not suggest a system of laws 
which I thought would contravene it. Hence, when I 

speak of legislation, I do not in all cases mean a 

213 



214 TENURE AND TOIL. 

legislative act, but the adoption of a constitutional 
amendment, when necessary, enabling Congress and the 
legislatures of the respective States to carry out and en- 
force its provisions. In a government founded upon a 
written constitution, there is no security to life or prop- 
erty but in obeying the mandates of the constitution. 
If any thing should be wanting or any change should 
be made in that instrument, let the people, not the 
courts or legislatures, supply the want or make the 
change. It is better for society to move slowly within 
the law than it is for courts to render the law uncertain 
by a too liberal construction of constitutional provisions 
through a process of judicial refinement. 

A man who invests his capital in building or improv- 
ing vacant property ought, in justice, to reap the bene- 
fit of the increase in value given that property by the 
investment. But a part of the increase in the value 
which attaches to surrounding property from the estab- 
lishment of manufactories and the development of all 
kinds of business enterprises might be given to the pub- 
lic without doing great injustice to its owners. This 
latter increase in the value of property is what is known 
to writers on economic subjects as the "unearned incre- 
ment." A man who purchased a quarter of a section 
of land in the city of Chicago twenty or thirty years 
ago, and held it until the city grew up around it, finds 
himself rich without any effort of his own. Other men 
invested in property situated some fifty or one hundred 
miles from Chicago and still retain possession of it, yet 
are little better off to-day than when they purchased. 
Hence the man who is made independently rich without 



UNEARNED INCREMENT. 215 

any effort of his own, and simply because he was for- 
tunate enough to invest in property which from its lo- 
cation and its surroundings has become of great value, 
should have little grounds for complaint if not permitted 
to retain the whole benefit to himself. The opening 
of streets, the construction of sewers and other improve- 
ments, paid for, directly or indirectly, by the public, the 
increase of population, and the investment of capital in 
improving the adjacent territory, have materially con- 
tributed towards enhancing the value of his property, 
and while the foresight of such a man in making the 
purchase, his good fortune or business qualities or what- 
ever you may call it, ought to receive its just reward, 
it would not be an act of great injustice to him if com- 
pelled to share his profits with the public who were in- 
strumental in making them. How can this division of 
profits be made between the individual and the public? 
In this way: From and after the year a.d. 1900, 
whoever owns property in or adjacent to any city, which 
he wishes to subdivide into lots, or when the public 
interests of the city require that such a subdivision 
should be made, the owner of the property subdivided 
shall be entitled to hold as his absolutely one-half 
thereof, and the municipality the other half, the lots or 
blocks to be allotted alternately so as to prevent any 
advantage being taken by the one party over the other. 
The sale of the property thus subdivided may be ac- 
complished in this manner : Whoever wishes to buy a 
lot for the purpose of a homestead, or with a view to 
permanent improvement, may agree upon the purchase- 
price with the owner or with the municipality, as the 



216 TENURE AND TOIL. 

case may be, and in case of failure so to agree, the lot or 
parcel of land which the party may desire to purchase 
shall be sold at public auction by the public official 
charged with such duty, after due notice, to the highest 
bidder for cash or on time. If sold on time, the de- 
ferred payments are to be made in a manner similar to 
the regulation provided for the redemption of deben- 
tures in the legislation of Germany or Russia, alluded 
to in former chapters of this volume. Purchases for 
the purpose of speculation shall be by private bargain 
and sale. Thereafter it shall be unlawful for the owner 
or purchaser of any vacant lot to place an improvement 
thereon of less value than two thousand dollars unless 
for the purpose of occupying the same as a homestead, 
and if, after making such improvement, he sells or dis- 
poses of the same, any other improvement made by him, 
whether as a homestead or otherwise, upon any other 
vacant lot he may own, shall not be of less value than 
two thousand dollars, the intention being to prevent the 
owners of property evading the law by making tempo- 
rary improvements so as to hold vacant property for the 
purpose of speculation. That from and after the year 
1900, whoever owns more than two vacant lots not held 
by him as part of his homestead in any city or addition 
thereto shall convey one-half the number of lots so 
owned or held by him to the city and the other half 
shall be owned by him absolutely, subject to the fore- 
going provision relating to the sale of lots. That from 
and after the division of property between the owner 
and municipality as herein provided such property shall 
be exempt from taxation the same as school properly, 



UNEARNED INCREMENT. 217 

but when improved by the owner, or a sale is made of 
any lot or lots, whether by the individual or by the 
municipality, such shall be subject to taxation the same 
as other property. 

The exact number of acres which may be properly 
held by farmers for farming purposes, by stockmen for 
stock ranches, and by lumbermen for the promotion of 
forestry and the supply of lumber, are matters upon 
which no one man is fully capable of determining. In- 
deed, the views of any one person upon any of the subjects 
suggested must necessarily be but limited, and therefore 
imperfect in many particulars. The essential point to 
be considered in connection with these matters is : Are 
the suggestions proposed of such a practical nature that 
they are capable of being put into execution ? If the 
answer is in the affirmative, the mode and manner of 
executing them are matters of detail merely. 

It is highly important to bear in mind the fact that 
the advocates of any change in party measures or State 
polity are apt to go to the other extreme. Great care 
should be taken therefore, when formulating a constitu- 
tional amendment which is intended to correct abuses, 
not to open too wide a door for other abuses which may 
become more serious than those sought to be eradicated. 
For example, there is a certain amount of injustice in 
compelling the individual to give up one-half of his 
vacant lots to the municipality, and the adoption of a 
constitutional amendment as a means of accomplishing 
that end does not in a strictly ethical sense lessen the 
injustice or sanctify the wrong. Yet it must be con- 
ceded that there is some consideration which the indi- 
k 19 



218 TENURE AND TOIL. 

vidual has received in return for what he loses which 
in a political sense may justify it. Even under the 
existing order of things it is said to be the law that the 
rights of the individual may be sacrificed for the public 
weal. This is neither right nor just in an ethical sense. 
So that the affairs of government are not enforced from 
the stand-point of natural justice, but from considerations 
of expediency and political justice. As natural justice 
ought to be the aim of governments as well as individ- 
uals, after the individual has satisfied the claims of ex- 
pediency and political justice by giving up half his 
vacant property, his right to hold, enjoy, and dispose of 
the other half should be scrupulously guarded and pro- 
tected. In other words, the grievances incident to a 
land monopoly may be remedied in the manner sug- 
gested without otherwise rendering the title to property 
less secure than it is under existing laws. 

It may be asked why the owners of vacant lots should 
be required to give up half without exacting a like sac- 
rifice from owners of improved property? There are 
several reasons why this distinction should be made, but 
to mention one or two will suffice. First, the object is 
to destroy the monopoly in land by placing it beyond 
the power of the owner to withhold it from any one 
who is anxious and willing to improve and pay a fair 
price for it ; and second, provision can be made for the 
occupants of tenements or farms, as the case may be, to 
become owners of the premises held by them either by 
private contract or by fixing a stipulated price to be 
paid in cash or in interest-bearing bonds based upon the 
rental value of the .premises for a certain number of 



THE GREED OF WEALTH. 219 

years, similar to the mode provided in the legislation of 
Germany or Russia, already mentioned. There is no 
reason why legislation of this nature should be confined 
to agricultural property. If just for the landlord of a 
rural tenantry, it should be just for a landlord of an 
urban tenantry. Besides these considerations, it may be 
suggested that the owner of improved property usually 
holds it as an investment, and not as a speculation. He 
has paid his share of the public burdens in the way of 
street and other improvements. He pays a larger pro- 
portion of the public taxes than the owner of vacant 
property, and his income may be reached, should it ex- 
ceed a certain amount, by the enforcement of an income 
tax. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE GREED OF WEALTH IMPERILS^ ITS OWN SAFETY. 

There is something radically wrong in any system 
of government wherein an individual in the brief space 
of a lifetime may amass a fortune of one or two hun- 
dred millions of dollars. Look around and behold the 
number of men who are railroad magnates and mer- 
chant princes, owning residences fit for kings, and mam- 
moth, costly,. and well-appointed business structures not 
inferior to the Bank of England, while around them 
are poverty and beggary and squalid nakedness and idle- 
ness and hunger. It was the gravity of this condition 



220 TENURE AND TOIL. 

of affairs and the depressing influence and the dire 
effects thereby produced which prompted the attack 
made upon corporate property in the inaugural address 
of the present governor of the conservative State of 
Iowa, instigated the legislation restricting and control- 
ling corporations proposed by the last legislature of that 
State, and which inspired the pen of a close thinker 
and thoughtful writer, a well-known journalist of that 
State, Hon. S. M. Clark, to say: "Here is an Iowa 
legislature attacking railroad property in the spirit and 
with the morals of a highway robber. . . . The invin- 
cible reason for every upright person to oppose what the 
present legislature was doing was that that body is 
menacing free government and civilization by corrupt- 
ing the people into a belief that dishonesty and theft can 
be legalized by the legislature. On such an issue there 
was nothing left for honest people and people who want 
to see our present form of government endure but to 
resist and oppose the legislature and the spirit of the 
anarchist and the communist that pervaded it. And 
just then the railways began to rob their stockholders 
by a cut-rate war. It is an act of spoliation and theft, 
and no casuistry or argument can make it any thing 
else. . . . The act is characteristic of that fatuity of 
insolence which has made the railroad managers the 
Ishmaelites of to-day: their hand against every man's 
and every man's hand against them. They are the 
robber barons of these times. Intrenched in the strong- 
holds of millions of dollars of consolidated capital, 
nearly every dollar of which has been stolen from the 
men who built the roads, they ravage the land with 



THE GREED OF WEALTH. 221 

the remorselessness of Middle-Age feudal chiefs, re- 
specting neither the government above them nor the 
people whom they trample beneath them in the wanton 
insolence of their power. They demoralized the Ameri- 
can people, who were trained by long generations of 
respect for private property ; they corrupted them and 
made such a legislature as that in Iow T a to-day possible 
by their own flagrant disregard of all property rights." 

Similar _ complaints may be urged with respect to 
merchants and manufacturers w T ho have grown enor- 
mously wealthy by pursuing methods which are hardly 
consistent with straightforward business principles. 
True, they did not rob their stockholders by a " cut-rate 
Avar," but they cheated either the public or their em- 
ployes, — the public, by charging too high a price for the 
commodities which they were compelled to purchase, 
or their employes by not paying them adequate com- 
pensation for their labor. Every yard of calico or 
flannel worn by the poor, every pound of tea, coffee, or 
sugar used in the family, every nail driven in the 
floor, knob or lock placed on the door, bedstead, spring, 
or mattress, stove, dishes, knife, fork, spoon, or other 
household article or utensil, has been sold at too costly 
a price, or the mechanic, clerk, and salesman who 
produced these articles and put them on the market 
have not been sufficiently rewarded for their skill and 
labor. 

One fact must not be lost sight of in the discussion 
of these and kindred subjects ; it is, that all men have 
the right to live, and unless afforded the opportunity of 
acquiring the means whereby to sustain and enjoy life, 

19* 



222 TENURE AND TOIL. 

the naked right to exist is but a barren ideality. 
Whenever, therefore, the business of an individual or 
of a number of individuals assumes such vast propor- 
tions, or is conducted in such a manner that it demoral- 
izes trade and crushes competition, some means should 
be devised to limit its vastness and control its power. 

There is in the city of Chicago one dry-goods house 
which, it is said, does a business of $35,000,000 
annually. This mammoth concern, not content with 
monopolizing the wholesale trade of well-nigh one- 
fourth of a continent, prompted by a greed insatiate 
and conscienceless, offers the innumerable commod- 
ities it carries in stock, for sale at retail, at the very 
door of the small dealer, at nearly the same price that 
it has charged him for the same articles at wholesale. 
It induces the small tradesman, by all the arts known to 
the trade, to invest his limited capital in a stock of 
goods, and then renders it impossible for him to dispose 
of those goods by enticing those who would be his 
patrons to come and buy of it at prices which the 
humble merchant cannot duplicate. 

In its almost illimitable retail establishment, it not 
only offers for sale such remnants and unseasonable 
goods as naturally accumulate in the course of trade, 
in its special line, but keeps a full stock of every article 
of merchandise required to satisfy the wants and gratify 
the pleasure of the innumerable army of purchasers. 
Buying these in immense quantities, it can undersell 
all others of limited capital, and thus grocers, druggists, 
jewellers, boot and shoe dealers, other dry-goods mer- 
chants, and all vendors with moderate means, are at the 



THE GREED OF WEALTH. 223 

mercy of this commercial octopus, which is ever extend- 
ing its remorseless tentacles not only to draw into its 
rapacious maw all the gold of traffic, but to crush and 
kill even the humblest who seek a single shekel of that 
wealth which it arrogates as its own. 

This Chicago concern, unfortunately, is not the only 
one of its kind in this country. Each of the great 
metropolitan cities has similar establishments operating 
in the same way and with the same disastrous effects. 
And this absorption of business and crushing of the 
feebler ones engaged therein is not confined to the mer- 
cantile, but finds lamentable exemplification in every 
department of trade and traffic. The concentration 
of capital in gigantic manufacturing enterprises has 
quenched the fires in the forge, silenced the wheel, and 
closed the shops of thousands of artisans throughout this 
land, and thus forced them to seek in other lines and 
mid other scenes the ways and means of earning a 
livelihood; and ofttimes failing, they have been driven 
into the ranks of the legions of dishonored industry 
from which are recruited the ever-increasing hosts of 
idleness marshalled by want while begging for work 
tramping over the country, goaded by hunger and hard- 
ened by suffering, to victory — the victory which death 
brings to misery and woe. 

These men, driven by the direful force of pitiless 
circumstances — seldom of their own making — out into 
the world, away from the restraints and virtuous influ- 
ences of a home, knowing naught of the saving love 
of a devoted wife nor the inspiring sweetness of a child's 
caress, save as a memory fraught with agony, — these 



224 TENURE AND TOIL. 

men, ostracized by society, spurned from every door, 
denied the favors given even to a homeless dog, — can 
it be wondered at that in time they should drift into 
drunkenness, vagabondage, and crime? 

These are facts, not theories ; facts which confront us 
on the streets of every city, on the lanes and highways 
of the country, in the wards of the hospital, in the 
recesses of the poor-house, and in the cells of the prison ; 
facts which the men of millions will do well not to 
ignore, and serious contemplation of which may conduce 
to their personal safety and the security of their much- 
worshipped wealth. The flippant and cynical, the two 
classes most worshipful at the shrine of mammon, are 
wont to stigmatize as shiftless vagabonds and drunken 
loafers that great number of men who daily loiter upon 
our street-corners or drag their weary length along the 
dusty roads from farm-house to farm-house; but in 
simple truth this is a vicious and cowardly libel, a 
conception of sordid selfishness, and the voicing of 
venal inhumanity. It may be true, and doubtless is, 
that some among them may be drunkards by choice 
and idlers by preference, but the great majority of them 
are men who would rather toil than beg, and would 
welcome as a blessing the fate which would enable them 
to exchange the life they are leading for one of severest 
drudgery. 

It is a fact, which no man can gainsay, that the 
great majority of our wealthier men pay no regard to 
the wants of the poor. This is forcibly true of our 
rapid-transit aristocracy, so numerous to-day, whose 
bank accounts constitute their tickets of admission to 



HUMANITY'S WRONG. 225 

the society of the upper-tendom, in which he of the 
plethoric purse out-ranks the manly man of moderate 
means and modest worth. These gilded parvenus, 
adapting themselves to their new environments, thrust 
out of their little minds and still more diminutive hearts 
all thought and feeling of the wants and rights of those 
with whom they were wont to associate in other days 
when "boiling soap" or "shoveling dirt." Considera- 
tion for the poor, except in making a donation for the 
benefit of some charity where it was certain the names 
of the donors would be heralded to the world through 
the press, would be social heresy in their circle. 



CHAPTER III. 

INEQUALITY OF CONDITIONS HUMANITY'S WRONG. 

It is but the old story of the toiling millions against 
the scheming few that has been told and retold in the 
history of every nation, — the former battling for the 
privilege of living, the latter grasping for power and 
pelf; and in this conflict the plutocrat enriches himself 
by robbing and enslaving the proletariat until the latter 
turns and, in vicious violence, despoils the former of 
his ill-gotten gains. In our own country the number 
of dependents and houseless wanderers is increasing 
daily. The laborer and mechanic seek in vain for em- 
ployment that will yield a living for wife and children. 
P 



226 TENURE AND TOJL. 

While labor begs for work the various industries are 
closed, owing to the refusal of capital to set the wheels 
in motion. Safety-deposit vaults and bank-coffers are 
filled to overflowing with millions of dollars, while 
thousands of men in every city are clamoring for a 
chance to earn food and shelter for themselves and 
families. It is no glittering assertion, but a glaring fact, 
that the rich are growing richer, and that the poor are 
growing poorer and more numerous. He who looks 
through the meretricious coloring of our much-vaunted 
material progress can but realize this painful truth. 
With these conditions existing, the poor are confronted 
with the alternatives of bartering their birthright to 
the money barons in consideration of their support and 
protection, or by a united, determined exercise of the 
modicum of political freedom they still retain, bring 
about a legal, civil, and social revolution which will 
establish and perpetuate an equitable equalization of in- 
dustrial and social conditions. The great majority of 
the people are virtually propertyless, and with them- 
life is a battle for bread, while the favored few possess 
the soil and enjoy every comfort and pleasure that 
opulence can suggest or supply. The last and only 
resort for those to whom a change is a necessity is the 
ballot, which in the hands of the mendicant or wage- 
worker is as potent as when cast by the millionaire. The 
penniless tramp, the industrious toiler, the struggling 
tenant, the small landholder, the tradesman of limited 
means, all who have felt the grinding power of the 
tyranny of greed, have a common interest in working 
for a reformation, radical and far-reaching, that will 



HUMANITY'S WRONG. 227 

bring to each relief of present burdens and opportunity 
for future efforts and success. These subordinate 
holders of power, acting in self-defence, should unite 
in solid phalanx, and break not ranks until they have 
engrafted such alterations and amendments upon con- 
stitutions and laws, fixing and regulating the title to 
land, as will work just division of property and conse- 
quent equitable distribution of wealth, securing to him 
who toils full fruitage of his labors. 

It is no less significant than lamentable that every 
effort heretofore made by the masses for their own 
amelioration has proved comparatively abortive. The 
failure cannot be ascribed to the weakness of their 
cause, but the rather must be in a great measure at- 
tributed to a want of unity of action and a fatal lack 
of intelligent conception of proper and effective means 
and methods requisite to employ in accomplishing the 
object in view. Another cause which militates against 
the success of such movements made in behalf of the 
common people is found in the proneness of men who, 
through a vigorous championship of their interests, se- 
cure the legislative and executive offices to forget ante- 
election pledges, and, that thrift may follow fawning, 
crook the pliant hinges of the knee to capital, ever seek- 
ing and securing proselytes among judges, governors, 
and legislators. Another cause, perhaps more potent 
than all others, that works discomfiture and demoral- 
ization in these reformatory movements, is found in the 
fact that the greater number of those actually interested 
in the success of such movements are so absorbed in the 
struggle for existence, and so burdened with the cark- 



228 TENURE AND TOIL. 

ing cares which crowd the life of toil, that they can 
give neither time nor thought to that which does not 
offer immediate relief to their necessities; and hence 
they are readily duped by the designing, or all too ready 
to clutch the paltry price proffered for their votes. Men 
of wealth must be wofully, wilfully blind, if they can- 
not read in the corruption of the franchise and the bar- 
tering of ballots the culmination of the crisis now im- 
pending. The day of reckoning may be deferred by 
such desperate methods, but at last, when patience is 
exhausted by promises broken, the conscience of the 
people perverted by those who have profited by its 
abasement, stung to madness by sin and suffering, will 
seek expiation for the one and revenge for the other in 
the destruction of the authors of their degradation and 
servitude. 

Labor may submit to the exactions and endure the 
oppression of organized capital for a long period, but 
its permanent enslavement is not possible in a country 
where the common school is a fixed and fruitful factor 
of individual development. 

This antagonism between the rich and the poor, ripen- 
ing into revolt on the one hand and rapine on the other, 
wrought the overthrow of the democracies of other times, 
and while it may not destroy our institutions, it threatens 
to dismember the union, unless the causes which provoke 
and aggravate it are removed, and their recurrence ren- 
dered impossible by the adoption of constitutional pro- 
visions and legal enactments inspired by equity, tem- 
pered by justice, as demanded by right and reason. 

History has made immortal the record of the virtues 



HUMANITY'S WRONG. 229 

and glories that characterized the golden age of Greece, 
when her sages and statesmen gave fall recognition and 
application to that fundamental maxim that liberty and 
democracy cannot coexist without equality of condi- 
tions, and when this was forgotten or ignored, special 
privileges and powers were granted to or usurped by 
the favored few, entailing of necessity that inequality 
of conditions that at length exhausted itself in the 
disintegration and downfall of the grandest political 
structure ever conceived and reared by the brain and 
hand of man. 

The past and present of the United States are but 
repetitions of the rise and progress of the nations who 
have gone before. Shall the future record our failure 
to profit by their example, and witness our decay and 
destruction from that same cause that worked the over- 
throw and ruin of others? 

We have reached that stage in national development 
where the common weal is subordinated to individual 
privilege, and the wants of the many are lost in the 
exactions of the few. On every hand we have indubi- 
table evidence of positive hardship and rank injustice 
as resultants of the inequality of conditions which 
obtains through the amassing of wealth and absorption 
of property by a meagre minority. It is hardly half a 
century ago when a man could count the millionaires of 
the United States on the fingers of one hand, but now T 
they are numbered by thousands. Labor produced 
these millions, and if labor had received a fair share of 
its profits, and the employers of labor had taken suffi- 
cient interest in the welfare of their operatives to in- 

20 



230 TENURE AND TOIL. 

struct them how to husband and judiciously invest their 
earnings, the mercenary plutocrats might now enjoy 
their millions in comparative safety, as a great majority 
of those now stigmatized as vagrant tramps would be 
loyal and industrious citizens, living with their families 
in their own homes, — " every man under his own vine 
and under his fig-tree/' 

New York Citv numbers among; its millions of in- 
habitants the richest man in America, if not in the 
world, who can expend two million dollars upon a pala- 
tial pleasure-yacht, and own a residence and grounds 
on Fifth Avenue which cost as much more, and yet 
there are thousands of men within the corporate limits 
of that city who are without house or home. This man 
inherited a princely fortune on the death of his father, 
and by shrewd management and skilful manipulation 
of stocks, it is said, he has augmented that inheritance 
until he is now the possessor of two hundred millions 
of dollars. Why should one human being possess so 
much wealth and enjoy all. the luxury which it affords, 
while so many of his countrymen are huddled to- 
gether in the tenements of that great city, suffering from 
sickness, hunger, and privation? May we not ascribe 
much of their wretchedness and misery to the ruin 
wrought through the fluctuations in the value of stocks, 
in the gilded gambling dens of Wall Street, by the 
power of his millions; stocks in which the public were 
induced to invest their means by allurements far more 
captivating than those by which the bunko-steerer of 
Chicago captivates the Western stockman ? How many 
of the haggard, famine-stricken faces daily seen in the 



THE BURDEN OF TAXATION. 231 

back streets and alleys of that city may not trace the 
origin of their downfall to the first investment made in 
Wall Street securities? How many of our Western 
farmers have been rendered homeless and purposeless 
through the same cause? Yet this high-handed species 
of gaining is tolerated under the nose of a supersensi- 
tive class of moralists who would arrest a man for 
laying a wager on a horse-race. 

A little Miss, a very child, in Philadelphia, the 
reputed possessor of seven millions, fondles her dolls 
arrayed in costly fabrics from across the seas, while 
thousands of little girls in the city of brotherly love, 
half-clad and hungry, can be found in the basements 
and tenements where herd the poor. These two painful 
but forcible illustrations of the inequality of conditions 
existing in this country certainly suggest the need of ac- 
tion — positive, heroic action — that will make it impossi- 
ble for such things to be. It is not sentiment that calls 
for this action : sense suggests, justice demands, and 
humanity commands it. 



CHAPTER IV. 

WEALTH SHOULD BEAR THE BURDEN OF TAXATION. 

Since the imposition of a tax upon income is one of 
the means by which the inequality existing between the 
capitalist and the consumer can be even partially equal- 
ized, the question arises, how should this tax be imposed 



232 TENURE AND TOIL. 

and enforced? It must be imposed in such a manner 
as not to cripple or necessarily impair individual exer- 
tions. The parables of the talents and the ten wise and 
the ten foolish virgins apply to every condition of life. 
Some men will make money and accumulate wealth 
where other men, given the same opportunities and ad- 
vantages, would starve. So that in adjusting matters 
for the general good care must be taken not to set a 
premium on idleness, sloth, or extravagance. Whatever 
condition of things may be devised, we cannot equalize 
natural inequalities. Some men are endowed by nature 
with greater facilities than others, and to that extent are 
capable of putting forth greater exertions and of accom- 
plishing greater possibilities. How many railroad men 
have had as good opportunities and advantages as the 
late T. J. Potter ; yet how few were his equals ! Utopia 
is an imaginary state, — a figment of the fancy ; govern- 
ment is a practical reality, an existing fact. In utopia 
men are made for laws as they are; in government 
laws are made* for men as we find them. We will al- 
ways have the idle, the thriftless, the poor, and the law- 
less, because it seems to be so ordained. How to deal 
with these classes, to benefit humanity, to preserve so- 
ciety, and to do justice to all should be the ultimate end 
of all government. The man who has a net income of 
one thousand dollars a year should be truly thankful 
that dame fortune has dealt so kindly by him, and not 
grumble if required to contribute one per cent, of it to 
the support of a government under whose laws he may 
enjoy life and pursue happiness in safety and peace. 
He whose income is two thousand dollars annually, in- 



THE BURDEN OF TAXATION. 233 

stead of one, ought to consider himself doubly fortunate, 
and should willingly part with two per cent, thereof in 
order to lighten the burden of taxation which would 
otherwise rest heavily on that portion of the community 
who are not so fortunate as he is and less able to bear 
it. The rate per cent, might be increased after his in- 
come has reached, say, ten thousand dollars a year, or the 
same rate could be continued on each additional one 
thousand dollars until the rate reached twenty-five per 
centum of his entire income. When this point was 
reached I should in no event require him to pay more, 
because to do so would have a tendency to materially 
chill the ardor and repress the ambition of men to ac- 
quire wealth and fortune. The desire to make money 
and to become wealthy is highly laudable when honor- 
able and legitimate means are employed to accomplish 
these ends. The object of an income-tax is not to check 
a laudable ambition or to stifle the efforts of the indi- 
vidual to " gather gear by ev'ry wile that's justified by 
honor/' but to render it impossible for any one man to 
become an unwieldy cormorant, — a hoarder of millions. 
By a fiction of the law, personal property is said to 
follow the person of the owner, so that a resident of 
Boston, who owns one million dollars of stock in an 
Iowa or Illinois corporation, would be compelled to pay 
taxes on this amount at his place of residence, if he made 
an honest return of it to the Boston assessor, although 
the property which gives value to this stock is situated 
in the foreign State. This is unfair and unjust to the 
people of the State in which the property that the 
stock represents is situated. In order to obviate this 

20* 



234 TENURE AND TOIL. 

injustice and to prevent any favoritism on the one band 
or discriminations on the other, the United States Col- 
lector of Internal Revenue should collect this income- 
tax, and when collected, it should be apportioned to the 
different States upon a basis of the taxable value of their 
property. It may be urged that the collection of such 
a tax would be impracticable, that men of wealth would 
evade the law by making false returns. Whatever else 
may be urged against Federal officers, it must be ad- 
mitted that they do not often connive at crime or make 
common cause with criminals. The criminal law is 
pretty strictly and expeditiously executed in Uncle Sam's 
courts. If a law was passed making it a penitentiary 
offence and forfeiture of property to render a false re- 
turn to the Collector of Internal Revenue, and also 
making malfeasance in office punishable for life or for 
a term not less than ten years in the penitentiary, there 
could be little cause for apprehending that such a law 
would be evaded or disobeyed. 

In the cantons of Switzerland, the villager who has 
supported cattle through the winter may send a certain 
number to pasture in the common called the alp. A 
general assembly of villagers is held in spring, before the 
herds go up to the mountain pastures, and every villager 
declares on oath the number of cattle he has kept through 
the winter. The slightest attempt at fraud is pun- 
ished by a heavy fine or by suspension of the right of 
common. In many villages, in order to restore greater 
equality, they have imposed a tax on each head of large 
cattle, the amount of which is distributed among those 
who have no cattle. Now, if this rule produces a 



TRUSTS— CAPITAL'S CONSPIRACY. 235 

"greater equality" in regard to large cattle sent to 
pasture on the alp, why should it not be productive of 
good results when applied to individuals in a country 
where some have grown so fat and unwieldy from de- 
vouring the good things of the earth that there is noth- 
ing left but crumbs for the lean and hungry to feed 
upon ? While inequality of conditions may be attrib- 
uted largely to natural causes, to mental and physical 
inequalities in the human species, if you please, yet it 
never was ordained by an All-wise Being that one man 
should live in luxury and extravagance, wasting and 
squandering sufficient to feed a thousand, while the 
thousand must look on and starve. It is not natural 
justice that he should; it is not legal justice; it is not 
political justice. Tax the large and fatted human 
cattle, and distribute the amount of the tax among the 
lean and hungry. 



CHAPTER V. 

TRUSTS— CAPITAL'S CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE 
RIGHT TO LIVE. 

For months the public press has been filled with the 
details of the formation of new combinations having 
as the moving cause of their existence the purpose to 
throttle competition in those lines of industry whose 
products are necessary for the living and doing of the 
people. Conspiracies have sprung into being in every 
department of trade and traffic. Men schooled in the 



236 TENURE AND TOIL. 

greed and grasp of monopoly have reached out for and 
secured the control of the gas and fuel supplies and 
transportation systems in well-nigh all the towns and 
cities of our land. The quantity of whiskey distilled 
is determined by a trust. Cabals of manufacturers 
have been organized to destroy competition in many 
fields of productions. The formation of pools, trusts, 
and alliances goes on undisturbed or at least with only 
a spasmodic effort now and then, here and there, to 
retard and embarrass the perfection of the conspiracies. 
Although the nefarious schemes by which insatiable 
greed is destroying industrial freedom and crushing 
honest competition are known to all intelligent ob- 
servers, and the woful wrongs wrought by their success- 
ful operation are seen and admitted on all hands, yet no 
positive, tangible action is taken by those who are the 
chosen guardians of the rights and well-being of the 
people to stay the hands of the despoilers and save 
their victims from oppression and plunder. The people 
are beginning to clamor for relief, and it is the part of 
wisdom for our statesmen to heed and act, It is true, 
bills for investigation and suppression of trusts and 
conspiracies have been introduced in the national Con- 
gress and in some of the State legislatures, but the 
suppressions "died a bornin'," and the investigations 
have proven profitless because the conditions revealed 
have not been removed nor their recurrence rendered 
impossible by legislation. I present below a few facts 
and suggestions touching upon this crusade of monopoly 
against competition. It should be remembered that one 
of the most pernicious results of these combinations, and 



TRUSTS— CAPITAL'S CONSPIRACY. 237 

one of the strongest motives that instigates the conspir- 
ators, is the exacting of greater profits from consumers 
than could be possibly obtained so long as competition 
exists. The law of supply and demand is powerless to 
fix the value of products in a market dominated by a 
trust. Our commercial system cannot survive such 
violent abuse by arbitrary oppressions of consumers, 
which would not be tolerated in any other civilized 
country in the world. The people have their remedy, — 
that remedy is legislation. The time to apply that 
remedy is now. The way to secure its application is 
to elect men to our legislative bodies who have positive 
and intelligent convictions as to what is right and what 
is wrong, and the moral courage to leave the imprint 
of those convictions upon the measures which they 
advocate and adopt for the righting of the wrongs 
which corporate conspiracies are now inflicting upon 
the industrial and commercial system of our country, — 
wrongs which are destructive to personal liberty and 
a menace to the perpetuity of the republic. A presi- 
dent of a railroad, in defence of his company for 
having joined the combination of coal companies to 
avert the calamity of " too much coal," plead that there 
are fifty trades or more engaged in the same thing. 
To justify his own iniquity, he urged the wrong-doing 
of others. He said, " Every pound of rope we buy 
for our vessels or our mines is bought at a price fixed 
by a committee of the rope manufacturers of the United 
States. Every keg of nails, every paper of tacks, all 
our screws and wrenches and hinges, the boiler flues 
for our locomotives, are never bought except at the 



238 TENURE AND TOIL. 

price fixed by the representatives of the mills that 
manufacture them. Iron beams for our houses or 
our bridges can be had only at the price agreed upon 
by a combination of those who produce them. Fire- 
brick, gas-pipe, terra-cotta, pipe for drainage, every keg 
of powder we buy to blast coal, are purchased under 
the same arrangement. Every pane of glass in the 
windows of our houses was bought at a scale of prices 
established exactly in the same manner. White lead, 
galvanized sheet-iron, hose and belting, and files are 
bought and sold at a rate determined in the same way." 

More than a century ago one of England's wisest 
economists said, " People of the same trade hardly 
meet together even for merriment or diversion, but the 
conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or 
in some coutrivance to raise prices/' The forceful 
truth of these words has gathered voice and volume 
each succeeding year since their utterance. This is 
verified unto all men in the reports of proceedings 
of meetings of the various associations of producers, 
dealers, and manufacturers which are held almost 
daily. They never fail, by " Whereas" and " Re- 
solves," to increase prices, determine production, and 
fix wages, and round up their convention with a sump- 
tuous feast, for which the people pay. 

The Sugar Trust. — The demand for sugar in this 
country is supplied by the refiners in whose factories 
the raw sugars imported from abroad, and those fur- 
nished from the Louisiana plantations, are prepared for 
use. These refiners have organized a trust which vir- 
tually places under the control of fifteen men in New 



TRUSTS— CAPITAL'S CONSPIRACY. 239 

York and Boston the entire consumption of raw sugar 
and productions of refined sugar in the United States. 
This trust is governed by ten trustees, who, sitting in 
council, can, by one vote, raise the price of sugar for 
sixty millions of people. Only a motion, followed by 
a second, a calling of the roll, and sending notice to 
trust agents, and the market-price goes up. Sixty 
millions of freemen subject to the greed of ten gilded 
plutocrats ! As the law now stands, the people are 
powerless. They must pay the price these Shy locks 
demand or do without sugar. A few figures may be 
interesting. Over three billion pounds of sugar were 
consumed in this country in 1887. A raise of one- 
half a cent on the pound gives $15,000,000 ; one cent, 
$30,000,000 ; two cents brings $60,000,000. The trust 
not only raises the price of refined sugars, but it lowers 
at will the price of raw sugars. A cargo of raw sugar 
is brought to New York or Boston ; it is offered for 
sale ; there is but one bidder and one buyer, — that 
bidder and buyer is the trust. It thus fixes the price 
it will pay for what it buys, as well as determines the 
price for which it will sell. The trust buys the raw 
sugar, and sells the refined. It had enjoyed a mo- 
nopoly of the sugar trade but four months when it had 
made a profit of twelve per cent, on its capital stock 
(watered until it was swollen to $60,000,000), or forty- 
eight per cent, upon the true value of the property 
actually put into the ring, — $7,200,000 profit in four 
months on an investment of $15,000,000! Comment 
is unnecessary. The rapacity of these sugar Shylocks 
does not exhaust itself in reducing the price of the raw 



240 TENURE AND TOIL. 

sugar it buys, and raising that of the refined sugar it 
sells, but it determines the supply. Since it began 
operation, nine refineries have closed, in the face of 
the positive assurance of the organizers of the m com- 
bination that they would shut down no refineries, nor 
put up the price of sugar. 



CHAPTER VI. 

OTHER TRUSTS. 

Castor-Oil. — Nothing escapes the mercenary clutch 
of these trusts. There are but five large mills in this 
country making castor-oil, and the owners have formed 
a pool, through the power of which they limit produc- 
tion, and sell their product at $1.20 per gallon, while 
foreign producers sell the same oil at forty cents. 

Linseed Oil. — The combination which controls 
this production advanced the price from thirty-eight to 
fifty-two cents (over thirty-six per cent,) last year, and 
in the space of four months the advance was thirteen 
cents. There is no legal limit bounding the exactions 
of this trust. The people must pay its demands, or 
make it impossible for the producers to control produc- 
tion or fix prices. 

Steel Rails. — During the great season of railroad 
building in the West, last year, the combine controlling 
steel rails forced the companies to pay $40.00 a ton. The 



OTHER TRUSTS. 241 

railway companies protested against such extortion, and 
at length determined that they would cease extensions 
unless $30.00 a ton was accepted. The combine protested 
that to sell under $32.00 or $33.00 would entail a 
serious loss to makers, yet they finally consented to sell 
for $31.50. That is, the trust agreed with the compa- 
nies to furnish them rails at an actual loss to the 
makers! Further, when the combine was forced by 
the railroad companies to accept $31.50, the board of 
control fixed the output under this agreement at 
800,000 tons, assigning a certain number to each 
maker, and when these were furnished no more orders 
could be filled.* The board of control regulates the 
output, distributes the work, and fixes the price. At 
the time of organizing this trust the price was $25.50 
per ton. The cost of production has not increased 
more than ten per cent. Allowing for that, and as- 
suming there was a fair profit at $25.50, the rate of 
$36.00 (which was the average price last year) yielded an 
additional profit of $8.00 a ton. Upon the year's produc- 
tion (2,050,000 tons) this profit was $16,400,000. The 
profit at $25.50 was $6,000,000 or $8,000,000 more. 
These enormous sums the people have to pay. The 
railways only advance the money. They who travel, 
and who ship their merchandise and produce over the 
railroads, in the end pay this immense profit which the 
trust exacts. 



* The Yulcan Mill, at St. Louis, stood idle for years, its 
owners, "however, receiving f 400,000 annually from the combine 
for not making rails, hut its locked-out employes received no 
share of this bonus. 

L q 21 



242 TENURE AND TOIL. 

Iron Ore. — There has been also a consolidation 
effected of the different iron-mining companies in each 
region, which is the initial step to the organization of a 
great combine, which will control the output and fix 
the price of this ore, which is the staff of every 
industry. 

Steel. — -We have two associations of steel manufac- 
tures, not competitors, but working with a singleness of 
purpose " to remedy irregularities in prices/' — that is, 
to force all makers to sell at the same price, and that 
price, the highest. 

Ploughs. — A manufacturer was paying four and 
one-half cents a pound for the steel parts of ploughs, a 
price satisfactory to the mills. The formation of the 
steel trust was followed by an advance of ten and one- 
half cents. The plough-makers at once formed a com- 
bination and raised the price of ploughs. One plough- 
maker refused to enter the combine. Those in the 
trust prevailed upon the steel-makers to make him 
pay two cents a pound more than the members of the 
association were required to pay. He was thus forced 
to enter the conspiracy or be driven out of business. 
Thus one combine begets another, and the people pay 
tribute to them all. 

Threshers. — One-half of the manufacturers of 
threshing-machines have organized a trust for " mutual 
protection and harmony of interests," which is fully 
provided for by passing on the farmer the taxes exacted 
by the steel and iron trusts. 

Keapers, Mowers, and Binders. — Nineteen of 
the twenty-one manufacturers of these machines have 



OTHER TRUSTS. 243 

combined to "curtail production and fix a system of 
uniform prices/' the full purport of which those who 
are compelled to use these implements will understand 
in having to pay the increase in price. 

Beajis.— There are but seven companies making iron 
and steel beams in the United States. They have or- 
ganized a pool to destroy competition by establishing 
and maintaining a common price, which for two years 
has been $73.92 per ton. The actual cost of making 
beams is but little in excess of that of making rails, and 
rails selling at $31.50 per ton yield large profits. 

Nails.— A majority of the nail manufacturers have 
also entered into a close combination to limit production 
and increase prices. 

Stoves. — The three hundred and fifteen stove manu- 
facturers have, in association assembled, declared " that 
the fundamental law of commerce and the dictates of 
reason" compel the adoption of the trust plan, which 
means the restriction of production and regulation of 

prices. 

School-Slates and School-Books.— A tribute of 
seventeen and one-half per cent, was levied upon the 
patrons of schools last year by the " combine" that 
controls the manufacture of slates. Nineteen of the 
leading publishers of school books met in solemn con- 
clave and resolved against " dishonest competition," and 
organized a combination by which they are bound to 
obey the orders of an executive committee as to prices 
and other matters. This is one of those incidental aids 
to free schools which lightens the purse if it does not 
the heart of those parents who, by stint and toil, strive 



244 TENURE AND TOIL. 

to bestow upon their children the only heritage within 
their power, a common-school education. 

National Burial-Case Association. — Even the 
dead do not escape the merciless greed of organized cap- 
ital. The makers of shrouds and coffins have formed 
a close corporation under the above title, and lest mortal- 
ity should be discouraged and Death himself dismayed, 
their scheme to keep up prices and limit the number of 
winding-sheets and caskets is kept a secret. As a fit- 
ting finale to successfully " cornering " the habiliments 
of the dead, they close their grave deliberations with a 
round of festivities. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE HYDRA TRUST AND QUINTET OF THE SHAMBLES. 

Standard Oil Trust. — Kerosene is the people's 
light the world over. In the United States upwards 
of three hundred and fifty thousand gallons of petro- 
leum are used annually. It is exported to Europe and 
the far East. The demand for it in the Orient is grow- 
ing faster than anywhere else. It illumines the ruins 
of Babylon and lights the devastation of Tyre; in the 
isles of the Pacific and far Cathay, in Turkestan, India, 
and China, the bronzed millions slave and dream, smoke 
opium and chew hashish, woo and win, decline and die, 
under the gentle light of this marvellous product of our 
inexhaustible caverns. 



THE HYDRA TRUST. 245 

Iii the United States, in town and country, it is the 
common illuminator. We light more lamps than we 
read Bibles. The crude material of this universal light 
is obtained in a limited area, commencing in Cattarau- 
gus County, New York, and extending about one hun- 
dred and sixty miles southwesterly, covering ten coun- 
ties in Western Pennsylvania, the width of the belt 
being about twenty miles. Here the bulk is obtained ; 
an unimportant yield being obtained in West Vir- 
ginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio. But compar- 
atively few of the sixty millions of people in our 
country who nightly burn kerosene are aware that its 
production, manufacture, and sale are all under the ab- 
solute control of a single corporation, — the most gigantic 
monopoly of this age of monopolies, — the Standard Oil 
Company. It has a capital of ninety millions of dollars, 
upon which it declares dividends of millions every year 
and divides among its stockholders. It tolerates no 
rival. It does not hesitate to draw its check for one 
million dollars to suppress a competitor if he cannot be 
quieted in any other way. It buys the crude oil at a 
price fixed by itself, and transports over thirty million 
barrels a year over the railroads under contracts of its 
own making. In the plenitude of its power it has 
partitioned the globe among its members. One con- 
trols Japan and China, another the countries of Europe, 
another the East India trade, and another that of the 
United States. 

This company has driven into financial ruin, or com- 
pelled to go out of business, or forced into surrender, 

all of the other coal-oil refineries, with but few excep- 

21* 



216 TENURE AND TOIL. 

tions, and these are engaged in a struggle for existence, 
— the struggle which means extinction. It dictates 
rates of transportation for its own freight to railroad 
companies, and at its behest these companies refuse to 
transport the products of other refineries or demand 
such a freight rate that its payment would entail bank- 
ruptcy. 

In towns and cities where gas and electric light 
supersede the use of kerosene, in the companies organ- 
ized to supply the former, representatives of the Stand- 
ard Company are active controlling factors, making 
their presence and power felt in the exorbitant rates 
charged for these advanced illuminators. Although 
seemingly gorged with its ill-gotten gain, its greed still 
insatiate cries for more, and henceforth it will convey 
its products by pipe-lines from the wells to the refineries 
located in the trade-centres, thus dispensing with all 
outlay for transportation by rail. 

Every person who uses kerosene pays a tax to the 
Standard Oil Trust upon each gallon of oil many times 
greater than its original cost to the company. Each 
family pays a tribute of about twenty-five dollars a year 
to this trust if they use but a quart a day. It is esti- 
mated — that the estimate is low is conceded — that the 
people thus pay into the coffers of this mammoth mo- 
nopoly twenty-five million dollars each year besides 
the millions received from the railroads in freight re- 
bates. These have amounted in a single year to fifteen 
million dollars. With these figures before us, we can 
understand how it may be true that the Standard pays 
one and a half millions in monthly dividends. 



THE CATTLE SYNDICATE. 247 

It can easily divide this amount of its ill-gotten gain 
among its stockholders and have millions left with 
which to influence legislation and elect to office, ay, 
even to the Senate of the United States, one of its 
master spirits. 

The Cattle Syndicate. — On the floor of the 
United States Senate, a few days ago, it was charged 
that five men in the city of Chicago regulate the daily 
price of cattle. That these men, through their pitiless 
sagacity and the power of their millions, destroy com- 
petition and render it impossible for cattle men to pro- 
cure a higher price than that agreed upon by this cattle 
cabal. A Western stockman finds from the market 
quotations that cattle are three and a half cents a pound. 
He ships his cattle to market, and when they arrive 
here a representative of the trust is sent to view them. 
The owner is informed that he can get two cents and a 
half a pound. He seeks another purchaser and an- 
other, but each gives him the same answer. He cannot 
store them; he cannot afford to ship them home; they 
are losing every day in weight and deteriorating in 
quality ; and thus he has no other alternative than to 
sell at the price dictated by the buyers, who practically 
confiscate the cattle man's property, as if they had the 
right to take it from his farm without paying for it. 
The decrease in price of one cent per pound was not 
caused by a natural change of conditions in the market, 
but by the grasping machinations of the five men who 
control that market. Under the operations of this 
trust the prices of cattle have been increased without 
reason, and ruinously. It is estimated that the stock- 



248 TENURE AND TOIL. 

men of Kansas alone have lost forty million dollars, 
and their loss was the syndicate's gain. With the 
fruits of this robbery lining their pockets, a committee 
of the " stock ring" has the brazen effrontery to pollute 
the halls of Congress with their presence, seeking to 
procure the passage of an act giving them exclusive 
control of cattle quarantine. This "combine" has 
formed an alliance offensive and defensive with the 
railroad managers by giving them an interest in stock- 
yards and feeding-stations and a share in the profits 
that gild the way from the Western stall to the East- 
ern shambles. As the syndicate coerces the stock- 
raiser into accepting the beggarly price it fixes upon 
his cattle, so it compels the retail dealer to pay an ex- 
orbitant price for the beef which he sells to the con- 
sumer, who thus is made the helpless victim of the 
avarice of the iniquitous quintet that speculates upon 
one of the necessaries of life. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE COAL CONSPIRACY. 

The Coal Trust. — In the summer of 1883, four 
men owning the largest interests in the coal-lands and 
coal railroads of the East, held a conference at Saratoga 
Springs to adopt some plan for the control of the coal 
trade. They agreed upon a scale of prices, and, as 
the most effective way of preventing an overproduction 



THE COAL CONSPIRACY. 249 

of coal, decided to suspend work at the mines. An 
order was issued for half-time work during the first 
quarter of the ensuing year, and for an increase in 
prices. This was the inception of what has since 
grown into the crowning combination of avarice and 
brutality of this age of greed. The companies com- 
posing this " combine" mine, transport, and sell their 
own coal. Our annual consumption of anthracite is 
over thirty-five million tons, of which about one-fifth 
is consumed in the West. The mine-owner who refuses 
to join the combination or disregards its orders is soon 
obliterated. It avails him nothing to operate his mine, 
for the railroads refuse to transport its productions. 
The retailer has become simply the agent of the trust, 
for if he dares sell at any other than the price fixed by 
the board of control his supply is cut off, and he is 
driven out of business. The primal purpose of the 
combination is solely to determine the output, and thus 
have a plausible pretext to advance the price. Re- 
pression of production necessitates the throwing of 
thousands of employes out of work. An increase in 
price of from one dollar to one dollar and a half a ton 
is no unusual thing. This means from thirty-five to 
fifty millions more of blood-money for division annu- 
ally among the members of the " combine." One com- 
pany owns nearly one-half of the anthracite area of the 
United States; one-third is divided among five other 
corporations, and the remaining sixth belongs to indi- 
viduals and firms, and is " necessarily tributary" to the 
railroads of the companies that own the five-sixths. 
Combination has been equally busy and effective in the 



250 TENURE AND TOIL. 

bituminous coal-fields. A pool controls the annual 
product and fixes the price of all the soft-coal mines 
north of the Ohio River, and steps are being taken to 
extend it to all the bituminous coal districts of the 
South. Prominent officials of the railroad lines trav- 
ersing these districts own controlling interests in the 
coal properties. These combinations thus not only 
keep the supply down by restricting the output, but, 
having control of the means of transportation, can 
withhold that supply from the market. Thus the coal 
companies and their coparceners in greed — the railroad 
companies — can bring about a coal famine at their own 
pleasure. During the summer, when nature gratui- 
tously affords the warmth necessary for our comfort, 
coal can be bought by the consumer for from $1.25 to 
$2.00 less per ton than when winter's icy blasts render 
artificial heat an absolute necessity. The poor, — their 
name is legion, — unable to take advantage of the low 
prices of summer and lay in their stock of fuel, become 
in winter the helpless victims of the pitiless cupidity of 
the coal barons. The variations of the temperature de- 
termine the fluctuations of the coal market. The lower 
the mercury descends the higher rises the price of fuel. 
The frozen necessities of the poor are made the fruitful 
opportunities of' the rich. Nature, ever gracious and 
generous, has provided inexhaustible supplies of the 
raw material of warmth in her storehouse, but this 
trust, with its impious hand, bolts and bars the door, 
and exacts from the people tribute thrice before suffer- 
ing them to partake of what is their own. He who is 
pinched with cold, his wife and children freezing, 



THE COAL CONSPIRACY. 251 

answerable to no law but the law of necessity, should 
force the door and enter and take that which is his 
own for the comfort and warmth of his family and 
himself. The so-called legal rights of such property 
should not be respected, for they are conceived in ra- 
pacity and brought forth in corruption. Man's right 
to live embraces the right to use and enjoy whatever 
is necessary as provided by nature for his existence. 
They who conspire to deprive him of that right are 
guilty of a sacrilege which proclaims their own out- 
lawry. Let the coal barons beware ! 

The combinations noted above are but a few of the 
many conspiracies organized and operating in our 
country against industrial freedom and individual com- 
petition. There is scarce a product of hand or wheel 
which enters largely into the comforts or necessities of 
life but what the makers have banded together to 
absolutely crush out all competition, limit the supply, 
and control the price. And all this is done, if not 
with the sanction, at least by the sufferance of our 
courts. The legislation of State and nation is but the 
formulating, in legal phrase and prescribed form, the 
nefarious plottings of corporation conspirators. These 
conditions should not exist. They and our republican 
institutions cannot, in their true force and virtue, 
coexist. The day is rapidly approaching when all 
these trusts, having perfected each its own system, may 
and probably will, in furtherance of their respective 
interests, unite in one grand combination to take abso- 
lute advantage of the public. Confronting this emer- 
gency, we perforce must choose between two alternatives, 



252 TENURE AND TOIL. 

— either let the State control the trusts, or let the trusts 
control the State. It is patent to the intelligent ob- 
server of events that our civilization is finding its highest 
commercial expression in these trusts, which, endowed 
with certain legal privileges, dictate terms to labor, fix 
the value of the necessaries of life, and determine pro- 
duction. These trusts are but the harbingers of a mighty 
commercial coalition which threatens to take absolute 
possession of our whole industrial and financial system, 
creating, in fact, a commercial feudalism. These trusts 
are inimical to the peace and safety of social and indus- 
trial order, for they provoke outbreaks and instigate 
oppressions which will demoralize and disrupt our whole 
political system. This condition is nearer at hand 
than we wot of, and is all the more easily brought 
about because no apparent apprehension seems to be 
felt. If the State does not take and hold control, the 
combines will soon crystallize into one universal mo- 
nopoly. These trusts, then, operating in conjunction, 
will reduce the middle and laboring classes to a con- 
dition of commercial serfdom, and, through the power 
of united action, absolutely control the productive 
industry of our nation. Then will exist a feudalism, 
based on commercial leagues, in purpose and power 
more sweeping and autocratic than the baronial leagues 
of the Middle Ages. Everything is tending to bring 
about this condition. The State is not only permitting 
but promoting the establishment of this commercial 
feudalism. Is it not time to call a halt — to provide 
legislative checks and restraints which will prevent 
the destruction of our entire social and political system ? 



WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH THEM? 253 

CHAPTER IX. 

WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH THEM? 

The corporation is a creature of the State. The 
creator is above the creature. The right to control 
and, if need be, to destroy is an attribute of the sov- 
ereign power which begets. The State brought these 
corporations into life and being, and the State alone 
must see to it that they do not become ruinous to 
society. When labor appeals to the national govern- 
ment for protection or redress of its grievances it but 
forges the chains of its own slavery. These corpora- 
tions were not created by any act of national legislation, 
and the Federal government has no jurisdiction over 
them. When the general government under the sanc- 
tion of a petition from the people attempts to exercise 
any authority over matters belonging exclusively to 
the State, it is a step towards the obliteration of State 
lines, which, if repeated, becomes a stride towards 
centralization. A government so far removed from 
the people is not a government of the people, by the 
people, for the people. The functions of the govern- 
ment of the United States are grand and beneficent 
when properly understood and exercised. We should 
only appeal to this government when life, liberty, or 
property is imperiled by the arbitrary and illegal action 
of the State. When the State has authority to act and 
to remedy, aid invoked from the general government is 

22 



254 TENURE AND TOIL. 

pregnant with danger. Power acting within constitu- 
tional limits is most salutary, but when it transcends 
those limits it becomes subversive of liberty. Inter- 
State commerce, strange to say, has become a shib- 
boleth of the laborer, but the day may come when a 
minion of power, under the mandate of a district judge 
of the United States, will, in conflicts between labor 
and capital, coerce into submissive obedience the labor- 
ers along a thousand miles of railroad. 

The Inter-State Commerce Bill is a national enact- 
ment of doubtful Federal authority, and under it the 
courts of the Federal government will gradually as- 
sume and imperceptibly absorb all jurisdiction of 
causes arising between railways, and between railways 
and their employes. The Supreme Court of the 
United States will doubtless uphold it, because capital 
inspired its adoption and labor has unwittingly ratified 
it. The legislature of the State has the constitutional 
right to provide that any railway corporation doing 
business within its borders, whether chartered under 
the laws of a foreign State or its own, shall make and 
maintain a uniform tariff throughout its entire length, 
and any discrimination in favor of the citizens of any 
foreign State as against its own citizens shall involve 
the loss of its business connections or work the forfeit- 
ure of its charter. 

The legislatures of Pennsylvania and Ohio, which 
States are the foster-mothers of the coal and oil trusts, 
have the undoubted right to control and, if need be, 
crush them, and it is their bounden duty to do so. 
They may provide the number of acres of mineral 



WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH THEM? 255 

lands which any individual or corporation shall own or 
operate within the State, and, further, that no individual 
or corporation shall be directly or indirectly interested 
in the ownership or operation of the coal property of 
any other individual or corporation, and that if any 
such individual, or the agents or officers of such cor- 
poration, shall agree or confederate with another to 
limit the output or fix the prices, the person or persons 
so offending shall be deemed guilty of a felony. A 
law embracing similar provisions could be framed and 
enacted which would reach and effectually prevent all 
trusts and combinations. Not only so, but the legisla- 
ture may also provide that the violation of any of the 
provisions of such law by the officers of any corpora- 
tion now existing shall work a forfeiture of its charter. 
I should not wittingly invade the sacred right of 
property, but would provide that, after the year 1895, 
no person or corporation shall own or control to exceed 
one hundred and sixty acres of coal-lands, except in 
the manner herein provided. That on the first day 
of January, 1895, every person owning or controlling 
such lands shall report to the Secretary of State the 
number of acres so owned and controlled, giving a full 
description thereof, and specifying in such report the 
one hundred and sixty acres which the person or cor- 
poration wishes to retain for mining purposes ; that 
thereafter, all lands so reported, other than the one 
hundred and sixty acre tracts so selected, may be pur- 
chased at private or public sale in the manner herein- 
before provided for the disposal of city lots ; provided, 
that in no case shall the owner, or agent of such owner, 



256 . TENURE AND TOIL. 

or person or corporation owning, leasing, or being in- 
terested in coal lands, whether as stockholder or other- 
wise, bid at any such sale or become owner of such 
property. That a failure or neglect on the part of any 
individual or corporation to make report to the Secretary 
of State, as herein provided, shall subject the party 
offending to a penalty of one hundred dollars a day, 
and any person bidding at the sale herein contemplated 
who has not the legal right to do so shall be deemed 
guilty of a misdemeanor, and liable to a fine of one 
thousand dollars and imprisonment in the county jail 
not exceeding three months. 

It may be urged that the State has not the constitu- 
tional right to divest the owner of property of his title 
thereto in this manner ; that such a law would be in 
contravention of the national constitution. I should 
avoid any such objection by simply saying: Amend 
the constitution to the effect that any State shall have 
the right to fix the maximum number of acres of agri- 
cultural, mineral, grazing, and timber lands which any 
person may own, and also the number of lots which 
any person may own in towns or cities ; and to provide 
for the disposal of any surplus in such manner as its 
legislature may determine. 



CRUSH TRUSTS BY LEGISLATION. 257 



CHAPTER X. 

CRUSH TRUSTS BY LEGISLATION. 

As will be observed, the writer has suggested such 
legislation as is necessary to prevent the formation of 
trusts in the future and to break up those already exist- 
ing. The laws requisite to compass the former it is 
within the province of the legislatures to frame and 
adopt at once, as nothing is proposed not fully sanc- 
tioned by the constitutions of the respective States. 
As to the latter, which effects what is termed the vested 
rights of property, requiring, as it does, in the author's 
judgment, the adoption of an amendment to the Con- 
stitution of the United States, sufficient time is given 
for all the preliminary proceedings necessary to the 
presenting, discussion, and passage of such amendment, 
and also giving the holders of properties affected there- 
by ample opportunity to voluntarily dispose of the 
same. In this day, when the highest judicial tribunal 
in the land seems so inclined to strained constructions 
of constitutional law, it ought not be held, at least by 
those who sanction such decrees, revolutionary or con- 
flicting with " vested rights," if the author had pro- 
posed immediate legislation limiting ownership already 
acquired of the properties referred to in preceding 
chapters. For if the State is vested with the authority 
under the constitution (as the United States Supreme 
Court has decided in the Kansas brewery cases) to carry 
r 22* 



258 TENURE AND TOIL. 

the exercise of its police power to abate nuisances so 
far as to compel a citizen to wholly quit a business in 
which he has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars 
under the sanction of the law because, as claimed, the 
carrying on of that business offended the moral senti- 
ment and worked the abasement of the community in 
which it was operated, then does it not follow, by a 
parity of reasoning, that the State is equally empowered 
by proper legislation to say to these trusts, whose work 
is the work of robbery and ruin of the people, " Cease 
your operations, — dissolve your unholy combinations, 
— the public good demands it." It might be urged 
that the plan suggested contemplates a virtual confis- 
cation of the citizen's property. What more ruthless 
sequestration can be cited than that practically resulting 
from the decree of the court above referred to ? The 
buildings, machinery, and all the appliances used by the 
brewer, of the peculiar character and construction re- 
quired in operating his business, are comparatively 
utterly valueless except when devoted to the use for 
which they were intended. What doth it avail a man 
to leave him in possession of property and at the same 
time forbid him to use it ? Is not this confiscation in 
the concrete, although observing right of possession of 
property in the abstract ? Will the people without the 
means to buy food suffer any more from hunger than 
he who is forbidden to buy food though his pockets be 
lined with silver ? And, besides, the plans suggested 
for reducing the possessions of present owners of pro- 
perty neither involves the taking of the same without 
any compensation nor the rendering of it unproductive. 



CRUSH TRUSTS BY LEGISLATION. 259 

There can be no question as to the power of the State to 
condemn and subject to sale the property affected by the 
legislation proposed, but such condemnation would in- 
volve an appraisement of the property and the payment 
of its ascertained value to the owner by the State. This 
would open the door to collusion between the owners of 
the properties and State officials, which would result in 
the placing of fanciful values and a consequent misappro- 
priation of thousands of dollars of the people's money. 
Let the wrong be as grievous as it may, no remedy 
should ever be resorted to save one that embraces a 
strict observance of the rights of all concerned ; and 
where force and virtue are denied from the highest 
source of justice and of right, the expressed will of 
the people, adopt an amendment to the Constitution 
of the United States in order that existing trusts may 
be dissolved and forever destroyed. It is foreign to 
the purpose of the author to seek to change or abolish 
present forms or institutions without suggesting what 
he believes to be something better in their stead, and 
he is equally solicitous that, in effecting all the transi- 
tions so imperatively demanded, we keep within the 
unwavering parallels of right and equity. " The mere 
time of the reform is by no means worth the sacrifice 
of a principle of law. Individuals pass like shadows, 
but the commonwealth is fixed and stable. The differ- 
ence, therefore, of to-day and to-morrow, which to pri- 
vate people is immense, to the State is nothing. At any 
rate, it is better, if possible, to reconcile our economy 
with our laws than to set them at variance, — a quarrel 
which in the end must be destructive of both." 



BOOK VI. 

DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION AND DIVISION 
OF PROPERTY. 



CHAPTER I. 

THOSE THAT WANT AND THOSE THAT HAVE. 

This fair land of ours was not made to be a work- 
house in which the spirit of its people must be broken 
and suppressed by servile toil. Wealth is on every 
hand, and princely provision for every need, comfort, 
and pleasure felt by man. Every measure is supplied 
for the growth and development of humanity. Why 
in this land of plenty does want so much exist ? Why 
such a multitude, born to equal heirship of nature's 
rich heritage, forced to the bondage of unrequited 
labor, to exhaust their energy and be despoiled of their 
better natures in the bitter strife for sheer existence ? 
Why so much private woe in the midst of so much 
public pomp ? Why a squalid hut within the shadow 
of every splendid mansion ? Why the homeless and 
starving mendicant tramping along the highway where 
roll the glittering equipages of the pampered million- 
aire? Why all this ignorance festering so near the 
thresholds of our temples of learning? Why in a 
260 



THOSE THAT WANT AND THOSE THAT HAVE. 261 

land so richly dowered are there so many thousands 
who want ? Resounding above the clamor of traffic, 
the clangor of machinery, the deafening din of the 
madding strife for gain, the echoes of a million voices 
can be heard, " Why do I want while others have ?" 

It will not suffice to seek to prove this cry a delusion 
by presenting a dazzling array of figures and statistics 
evidencing our marvellous progress and almost incred- 
ible increase of national wealth. Nothing is more mis- 
leading than figures, and- statistics are often naught but 
illusive generalizations. It would be suicidal folly to 
endeavor to silence these voices with a policeman's club 
or a Gatling-gun. 

Conditions exist which give just cause for complaint. 
In a country where the lower millions own nothing 
and the upper tens own millions there cannot but exist 
inequality which, perforce, must breed hardship and 
suffering. The concentration of capital in the hands 
of a few is rendered possible only through the robbery 
of the many. Colossal fortunes proclaim the abject 
misery of the laborer. Pitiful squalor follows in the 
wake of excessive opulence, — a spectre of its own crea- 
tion that will not down. These extremes should not 
exist, — they must not. The condition of the wage- 
workers should be the primal and most serious object 
of the government's concern. That they are at present 
in a most unhappy and deteriorating state cannot be 
successfully denied, and most certainly in a land of 
such vast and varied wealth and resources this condi- 
tion can only be attributable to defective organization 
or maladministration. 



262 TENURE AND TOIL. 

The true object of popular government, such as ours 
is claimed to be, does not consist in solely enriching 
and peopling a country, but in the enactment and 
administration of a code based upon a recognition of 
the fact that morality is the only true basis of life and 
law, that the growth and well-being of the individual 
are the foundation of productive power and of wealth 
secure, adhering to this course unfalteringly until the 
line which divides utilitarianism from humanitarianism 
is obliterated. Such modes of life and such avocations 
should be encouraged which are most conducive to wise 
living and virtuous growth. 

As it is now, not only the tendency of the times, but 
the purposed endeavors of the government, are promoting 
the accumulation of enormous fortunes, establishing a 
landed monopoly, and helping to build up populous 
industrial centres, which become necessarily hot-beds 
of seditious revolt, mental degeneracy, and moral degra- 
dation, the only patent product of all which is an 
increase of mendicants and millionaires. 

Immense private fortunes are hostile to democratic 
institutions, begetting envy, unrest, and pauperism on 
the one hand, and sordid tyranny and political de- 
bauchery on the other, presaging anarchy and des- 
potism. 

To corporations have been donated tracts of the 
public domain in range and resources rivalling the 
realm of a king of the Middle Ages, and individuals 
permitted to buy and hold thousands of acres to await 
the growth of the country before using or selling ; and 
thus have the people, despoiled of their patrimony, 



THOSE THAT WANT AND THOSE THAT HAVE. 263 

beeu forced to become tenants and hirelings. The 
history of the world contains the bloody recital of 
agrarian revolts instigated by a frenzied desire to regain 
the people's birthright in the soil and equalize more 
nearly the conditions of men. 

The building up of great manufacturing centres 
fosters the concentration of wealth and encourages the 
congregating of thousands in cities, where they are 
housed in crowded and comfortless quarters, depending 
upon employment which is ever uncertain, being sub- 
ject to the fluctuations of the market and the caprices 
of capital. The house in which a laborer lives has 
much to do in moulding his character, and he can but 
endure bitter self-humiliation when he sees his em- 
ployer's horses better housed than his own family. Swit- 
zerland is the poorest country in Europe, and the United 
States boasts of being the richest in the world, yet the 
Swiss artisan would turn with contempt from such 
houses as his fellow-craftsmen occupy in this country. 

The home is the initial point of every ennobling 
element of civilization, and its ownership should always 
be vested in its occupant ; then it would become the 
centre of loyalty, the abiding-place of love and beauty. 
In all well-organized communities the ownership of 
property is indispensable to the enjoyment of freedom, 
and in all stages of civilization the possession of a 
home is a condition requisite to the exaltation of 
humanity. If life is a natural right of the individual, 
home is equally a natural right of the family. It is 
urged against any method proposed for a restoration of 
comparative equality of conditions and for the general 



264 TENURE AND TOIL. 

betterment of the common people, that its practical 
application involves a violation of the right of prop- 
erty. The right of property itself is subordinate to 
the general welfare, and that welfare is- not conserved 
by any system of political economy which permits or 
sanctions the acquisition of princely wealth by a few 
and dooms the toiling millions, the producers of that 
wealth, to a life of despairing drudgery or abject 
pauperism. The elevation of the poor does not 
involve the humiliation of the rich. A proper and 
salutary adjustment of social and industrial conditions, 
which justice demands and wisdom dictates, can be 
effected without a single member of society having any 
right infringed or any privilege impaired which he is 
justly entitled to enjoy. 

An equitable division of property and a judicious 
and timely distribution of population, provided for and 
enforced through legislative enactments, the writer 
believes, would effectuate and preserve the harmonious 
adjustment of all the parts of our individual and 
national economy. I have suggested in preceding 
chapters the legislation necessary for a just and reason- 
able division of property and limitation of ownership 
therein, and now proceed to treat of the distribution 
of population, its necessity, and the best way in which 
to accomplish it. 



AN EQUITABLE DIVISION OF PROPERTY. 265 



CHAPTER II. 

AN EQUITABLE DIVISION OF PROPERTY DEMANDED. 

A distribution of population would be imprac- 
ticable without a division of property, and before 
inquiring into the necessity of the former it may be 
well to further consider the justice of the latter. 
Necessity makes that lawful which is otherwise un- 
lawful, and, were there no other justification that 
could be pleaded in favor of an allotment of the 
property of a country among its people, this necessity 
would suffice. But, in truth, there are other tenable 
grounds upon which this can be rightfully urged, within 
whose limits arise many of the inhibitions at present 
imposed upon owners in the use and enjoyment of their 
property, — inhibitions to prevent that use and enjoy- 
ment from being perverted into abuse or from working 
injury to others. It should not be understood that by 
a division of property we mean that an equal portion 
should be assigned to each individual, but that, in addi- 
tion to the means suggested in other parts of this work 
for preventing a land monopoly and promoting a fair 
division of the joint profits of labor and capital, some- 
thing practical should be done to relieve the strained 
conditions now existing between labor and capital, so 
as to place the greater number of those who are a bur- 
den upon both in a position where they may become 
self-supporting. Every man has the right to live. 
m 23 



266 TENURE AND TOIL. 

It is moral murder if we admit this right and yet 
make its exercise impossible. The earth was made for 
man, not man for the earth, and when conditions inter- 
dict his enjoyment of his rightful portion he is robbed 
of his birthright ; and it matters not whether that rob- 
bery be perpetrated in the name of the law or by the 
lawless, it is robbery still. But we are told that what 
a man acquires is his and .that what is his cannot be 
taken from him without his consent. Yet it will be 
admitted that that consent is not necessary when a 
national emergency requires the sacrifice of the prop- 
erty of the individual. The nation is but the indi- 
vidual in the aggregate. That which is conceded to 
national necessity should not be denied to individual 
need. 

It is a common saying, accepted as true by the un- 
thinking, " that a man has a right to do as he pleases 
with his own," and yet there is none more untrue. 
He is forbidden by the law to maltreat the animals 
which he may own or to inflict injury and torture upon 
any living thing. If he sets fire to his own house, 
thereby endangering the person or property of others, 
he is guilty of arson. A man's right in the use and 
enjoyment of his own property is determined by the 
common conscience of the community of which he is 
a part. Why should the law be so sensitive about the 
harming of a brute and so callous as to the hungering 
of the human? Why punish a man for destroying 
his own house, yet permit him to make it impossible 
for another to have a home ? Right in the absolute is 
fixed and changeless, yet the standard of right rises 



AN EQUITABLE DIVISION OF PROPERTY. 267 

with the advancement of humanity, and may not this 
ascending change soon impel the public to determine 
how far individual vandalism against nature shall ex- 
tend and where the rights of the common people shall 
begin? The law forbidding the mangling unto death 
of slaves by wild beasts that Rome might have a holi- 
day was denounced as infamous by the money barons 
of the imperial city ; they declared it to be a ruthless 
spoliation of vested property-rights and unwarranted 
interference with the pleasurable pastimes of the people. 
The cry of " vested rights" is the " stop thief" of him 
whose purse has grown plethoric by the impoverish- 
ment of others when he is ordered to disgorge his ill- 
gotten gains. The right of property in human beings 
was once a vested right in this country, created by 
common consent, guaranteed by the constitution, and 
consecrated by a century's legislation ; yet the quicken- 
ing conscience of the nineteenth century, beholding in 
this vested right the world's crowning crime, revolted, 
and the rebellion which followed wrought the extirpa- 
tion of the " vested right" as the lightning of heaven 
with its electric flash calcines the poisons in the atmos- 
phere. It was a triumph of the nobler sentiments, — 
the higher law of enlightened conscience overthrew 
these legislative enactments, and in their destruction 
branded the vested right of yesterday as the venal 
wrong of to-day. Men of thought, men of conscience, 
have no patience with the civilization which permits 
one man to acquire a hundred million dollars while a 
hundred thousand of his fellow-men starve. 

Absolute ownership of property unrestricted by any 



268 TENURE AND TOIL. 

regard for the rights and well-being of the present and 
coming generations finds no warrant in right or reason 
or any parity in law or nature, and clearly has it been 
shown by the world's best thinkers that that social 
economy which finds no analogy in the economy of nature 
is false in inception and vicious in results. These 
things are all admitted to be correct in theory, but are 
said to be wrong in practice. That which is true in 
the abstract cannot be false in the concrete. Man, 
however, does not, save when prompted by selfish mo- 
tives and controlled by avarice, commend that in others 
which he refuses to do himself, and resist all attempts 
to prevail upon him to perform an act which in others 
meets his own approval. The giving away of large 
tracts of land or large sums of money embalms the 
names of the donors in the memory of mankind, and 
those are loudest in their praise who, though rich, 
stint dependants and see, unmoved, penury and want all 
around them. Is not this but an acknowledgment of 
the correctness and justice of the principle that men 
should share their wealth with their less fortunate 
fellow-men, offer them a helping hand, and provide 
for their material comforts and their mental, moral, 
and social elevation? But as sordid wealth takes no 
note of such matters, it is the duty of the State to look 
after the welfare of all her children, and, through wise 
and salutary laws, compel the hoarder of millions to 
contribute to the doing of that which he should have 
done voluntarily. Can that which as a charity is 
right be wrong as a duty ? Is it consistent to praise 
others for doing that which we deny the right of the 



AN EQUITABLE DIVISION OF PROPERTY. ^69 

State to make us do ? Does the compelling constitute 
the wrong ? Men should be consistent. Whatever their 
conscience approves in others they should be willing to 
do themselves, and if they have not the manhood to 
discharge a duty while it is only a moral obligation, 
they should be willing for that moral obligation to be 
made a legal duty. The division of property in view 
would neither impoverish nor enrich the parties affected, 
and the legislation proposed does not contemplate the 
taking of an individual's possessions without fair com- 
pensation. The one prime object is to supply a home 
to every family, secure to them the means of making 
a living, and elevate them into the highest and best 
citizenship. 

The stability and progress of a country must depend 
upon the character of its peasantry, and whether the 
character of that peasantry will be debased or elevated 
will depend upon the relation they sustain to the land 
of their country. Ownership of property is the true 
condition of liberty. He who is dependent upon 
another for the land he cultivates cannot be free and 
independent. In England and Belgium, in truth wher- 
ever in Europe the liberty of voting is secured, the 
introduction of the ballot was necessary and hedging 
it about with many legal precautions lest the landlords 
should know how their tenants voted. In Switzerland 
every one can exercise the right of suffrage, but every 
one can likewise enjoy the right of property. The 
highway of nations is strewn with the ruins of the 
democracies of the past. Their decline and fall can 
be truthfully ascribed to the defect in their polity, 

23* 



270 TENURE AND TOIL. 

which, while recognizing and protecting political equal- 
ity, failed to establish an equality of conditions such 
as would have prevented the conflicts between the rich 
and the poor which grew into the revolution that re- 
sulted in despotism. After the common people have 
wrested their liberty from the ruthless hands of an 
oligarchy or despot, and secured the establishment of 
political equality, there remains a strife which will be 
coexistent with the life of the republic: it is the 
struggle between the rich and the poor, between those 
who own property and those who are proprrtyless. 
To-day the peril is admitted by all intelligent observers, 
aud recent events in our own country declare this to 
be the vital defect in democratic institutions. 

Permitting all to share in the collective prosperity 
would prevent excessive inequality opening a chasm 
between the higher and the lower classes across which 
bitter warfare will rage until the former are enslaved 
by the latter. To prevent this is a consummation 
devoutly to be prayed for. 



CHAPTEE III. 

THE GREAT CITY A FRUITFUL SOURCE OF NATIONAL 

PERIL. 

It may well be doubted whether there is another 
source from which the industrial interests and political 
peace of our country are so imperilled as from the con- 
centration of capital and congregation of people which 



THE SOURCE OF NATIONAL PERIL. 271 

make up the mighty cities of our laud. To the student 
of history it is clearly apparent that we are rapidly 
approaching that period in national existence which was 
attained by Rome when the empire was transformed 
into one grand organization of muuicipalities that ab- 
sorbed every element of industry, save the agricultural, 
and that soon became servilely dependent. Then arose 
those dissensions, tumults, and social convulsions which 
worked the decline and final destruction of the world's 
greatest empire. The lessons of the recent strikes, 
referred to in a former chapter, can be studied to an 
advantage in this connection. 

The report referred to of the Bureau of Labor shows 
that in the five States of Illinois, Massachusetts, Ohio, 
New York, and Pennsylvania, occurred 74.84 per cent, 
of the strikes and 89.48 per cent, of the lock-outs 
happening during the term covered by the report, and 
also that these States contain 49 per cent, of the manu- 
facturing establishments in the country and 58 per cent, 
of the capital invested in that industry. These States 
contained by the census of 1880 about one-third of the 
population, and less than 6 per cent, of the area, of the 
United States, and within their borders these disastrous, 
social, and industrial disturbances which are growing 
more frequent and violent each succeeding year, ex- 
ceeded three times the number happening in all other 
States and Territories. Is not the bare statement of 
this fact sufficient to excite the anxious inquiry as to 
the reason why it exists? It is certainly suggestive of 
the existence of forces, violent and vicious, at work in 
that limited portion of our national domain, embraced 



272 TENURE AND TOIL. 

within these States which can find comparatively no 
encouragement in the vast expanse of territory included 
in the remaining nineteen-twentieths of the Union. 

The five States named, with a total population in 
round numbers of 17,000,000, had, in 1880, an urban 
population of over 7,500,000, or nearly one-half of the 
citizens of these States dwelt in the towns and cities. 
Within their territory we find those great industrial 
centres, New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago, Bos- 
ton, Pittsburg, Cleveland, Cincinnati, supplemented by 
large mining districts, where thousands of men are 
herded together without any diversion but drudgery, 
and without any association or connection with the 
prosperity or property of the section they inhabit. 
The most violent and consequently the most disastrous 
of these industrial outbreaks we find occurring in these 
great manufacturing and mining centres. 

In Illinois the urban population forms one-third of 
the entire population of the State ; in Massachusetts, 
two-thirds; in Ohio, nearly one-half; in Pennsylvania, 
over one-half; and in New York, over three-fifths. 
In the States of Alabama, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, 
Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, 
Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin, having a total popu- 
lation equal to that of the five States named, the urban 
population constituted less than one-fifth of the total, 
and within their borders occurred only 5.93 of the 
strikes and 2.48 of the lock-outs, although containing 
13 per cent, of the manufacturing establishments and 
21 per cent, of the capital invested in those industries 
in the Union. 



THE SOURCE OF NATIONAL PERIL. 273 

A further comparison of the economic conditions 
existing in these two respective groups of States shows 
that in the first group there were 93,000 lunatics, im- 
beciles, mutes, and others classed as " defective ;" 
52,200 paupers, and 25,000 prisoners in jails and 
penitentiaries, while in the latter group there were but 
75,000 defectives, 23,000 paupers, and 18,000 pris- 
oners. This excess of insanity, pauperism, and crime 
existing among 17,000,000 people in one section of the 
country as compared with that existing among the 
same number of people in another section of the same 
country should prompt earnest inquiry that would grow 
into searching investigation as to the cause and con- 
ditions that contribute to and aggravate its existence. 
Such an investigation would disclose the fact that the 
cities furnish the far greater proportion of the unfor- 
tunate classes referred to who are a burden and a 
menace to the progress and permanency of society. 
An examination of statistics would also show that the 
increase of the urban population in the United States 
each successive year is much greater than the increase 
of population in the country. This " congestion to the 
metropolis," so characteristic of modern times, seems 
inevitably incident to civilization; yet it goes without 
question that the advantages gained by it in material 
progress and wealth are overbalanced by the evils it 
occasions in the social and moral life of society. 

It has been truly said the city is the grave of 
humanity, for while the artificial advancement of the 
favored minority is evidenced in the grandeur of its' 
structures and the splendor of their appointments, in 



274 TENURE AND TOIL. 

the lavish display of luxury and sumptuous living that 
glitters and glows along its boulevards, yet back of 
this dazzle and glare, away from the marble mansions 
and the gold-coining mart, the great majority are herd- 
ing in hovels and fighting for life mid environments 
and associates that render escape impossible and exist- 
ence a curse. To see and know the truth of city-life 
we must go not upon the wide, well-paved thorough- 
fares, where dwell the rich and prosperous in com- 
modious homes, but where the poor and unfortunate 
burrow in crowded houses and crawl through narrow 
and dingy streets and alleys. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE HOVELS WHERE HOMELESS THOUSANDS DWELL. 

The " lower million" in every city exist close to 
the " upper ten," yet their presence, though near, in 
fact, is deemed but the figment of a disordered fancy, 
and but little thought and less care is given to them in 
any direction that would lead to their discovery and con- 
sequent betterment. A visit to a region of poverty, 
degradation, and crime, where hope and thrift are un- 
known, may not be without its lesson. It is a strange 
anomaly in human life that within an area of one 
hundred blocks forming a portion of what is known as 
the South Side in Chicago can be found the owners of 



WHERE HOMELESS THOUSANDS DWELL. 275 

colossal fortunes and human beings in the most abject 
poverty, — palaces filled with plenty and luxury and 
huts ever haunted with hunger and want, — troops of 
children sporting on shaded lawn or making frescoed 
halls ring- with joyous laughter, while a few blocks 
away boys and girls, with pinched features and laugh- 
less lips, crouch in the shadow of grimy walls or search 
for food from garbage-box and gutter. In this locality 
— which has its prototype in every other large city in 
the land — the palatial homes of the rich, their churches 
and schools, and broad streets and boulevards, border 
the shores of the beautiful, far-spreading lake, while 
just across a single street the hovel-homes of the poor 
are huddled together on narrow, noisome, and smoke- 
clouded streets running to or along the slimy river. 
Here the rich and poor are together, yet as far apart 
as though separated by many a league. Within the 
limits occupied by the poor it is estimated there are 
35,000 souls, and of these not 3000 dwell in decent 
houses ; long stretches of unpaved streets, covered many 
feet deep with the oifal of an unclean populace, who, 
unrestrained, cast out whatever they will, and it is left 
to breed contagion and disease. The summer sun 
converts much of it into pest-breeding dust, which is 
blown by careless winds across the border-line and into 
the homes of the rich, whose owners have never seen 
the source whence it comes. . 

Along these filthy streets are rickety, rambling 
buildings, almost overlapping each other, with roofs 
and sides awry and reeking with filth and swarming 
with vermin, the latter disporting themselves with all 



276 TENURE AND TOIL. 

the freedom of ownership in the broad light of day. 
But few of these wretched tenements are for rent, and 
all up and down the length and breadth of this plague- 
spot each demoralized dwelling is seen to be crowded 
to its utmost capacity. Although the houses and their 
occupants at first impress one as though here was no 
sense of shame or desire to better their lot, it is not so, 
for the excuses they offer for the untoward condition of 
things in general, and the genuine gratitude for a few 
words of cheer or kindness which finds expression 
from these battered wrecks of manhood and woman- 
hood, show that they yet possess the ability to respond 
to better things, and are painfully conscious of their 
own degradation and seemingly hopeless of escape from 
it. As must needs be, the vicious and criminal are at 
home here, but it is also the enforced abiding-place of 
industrious poverty. 

Here is the opportunity to study social and humane 
problems from the very actuality of human destitution 
and degradation, and here the evils, born of the ine- 
quality of conditions, can be traced to tiieir rightful origin 
with a distinctness that must perforce bring conviction 
that the readjustment and reformation of our social and 
political economy -is a necessity demanded by justice 
and humanity. In this quarter, devoted to human 
demoralization and degradation, there are from six to 
ten members to a family, and these are stowed away in 
three or four small rooms, often wholly under ground. 
A few of the many children go to school, but the greater 
number, not having the necessary clothes or books, spend 
their days in aimless idleness upon the streets, taking 



WHERE HOMELESS THOUSANDS DWELL. 277 

their first lessons in that vagabondism which, as the 
years go by, generates vice and crime. Inertia is the 
one potent evil here. This, to the unthinking, would 
seem inexcusable and indicative of an innate worthless- 
ness that would render abortive any effort at their 
elevation. But it is not so. Look deeper. How can 
bricks be made without straw, and when the feet are 
once set upon the tread-mill and there is no hope of 
ever being lifted therefrom, where is he who would 
tread faster than he must? Courage, energy, and in- 
dustry are active only when incited by hope, and when 
hope dieth their impelling force is gone. The stoutest 
energy will quail and sink, and utterly die out in the 
constant presence of filthy housing, vile companionship, 
foul air, and forbidding sights and sounds. 

From these the actually poor have no escape, — no 
hope of escape as things are now ordered ; for one of 
the things which is most difficult, nay, almost im- 
possible, to find in any large city are clean, wholesome, 
and decently-appointed tenements, near the laborer's 
work, which can be rented at a price he can afford to 
pay. It cannot be otherwise that here the causes 
which work the ruin of manhood are untouched and 
ever active, breeding indefinitely limitless broods of 
evil and woe, and until homes are provided for the 
poor, w T here it is possible for them to live at least de- 
cently upon their own industry, this social problem 
will fail of solution. In this quarter more than 30,000 
people are living as no human being should be obliged 
to live. Surely there is a field in all our cities for 
broad basic endeavor, for social and industrial reform, 

24 



278 TENURE AND TOIL. 

and they who have the mind and means to pursue this 
endeavor should apply themselves to its accomplishment 
as a matter of personal safety and public good. Why 
such localities as the one here briefly described should 
be permitted to exist is a painful commentary upon the 
selfishness and greed of those who could if they would 
render its existence impossible. 

The rental collected from the wretched habitants of 
the section referred to brings the owners an income of 
ten per cent., while the property a few blocks away 
on the wealthiest residence street in the city nets its 
owners only about four per cent, or five per cent., which 
is regarded a satisfactory return, and here we have the 
poorest of the poor paying ten per cent., while the man 
who is able to pay one thousand dollars a year for a 
home pays less than half as much interest to the in- 
vestor as does the pauper. In this do we find one 
reason for the continued existence of such disgraceful 
localities? 

Something ought to be done to relieve the cities of 
this great surplus, suffering population. What shall 
it be ? In the densely populated countries of Europe 
emigration has proven the true remedy for over-popula- 
tion. With us migration can be made a great national 
fact and social blessing. There are millions of acres of 
fertile lands, with fat harvests sleeping in their un- 
wrought and unbroken soils, awaiting the awakening 
touch of human hands. These lands should be peopled 
with the thousands now crowding the cities. Many 
would go upon them from choice had they the means ; 
to such let the means be given. Those who would 



LAND-HOMES FOR THE HOMELESS. 279 

not go willingly, make their going and occupancy com- 
pulsory. Divide the land which is the people's heri- 
tage among the people for use and occupancy, and make 
ownership a condition of certain wise provisions well 
fulfilled. How this may be done we will show in the 
succeeding chapter. 



CHAPTER Y. 

LAND-HOMES FOR THE HOMELESS. 

Mr. Gladstone, the world's Great Commoner, in 
referring to our landed area and its marvellous resources, 
said, " The United States have a natural base for the 
greatest continuous empire ever established by man." 
We need but build aright upon this base, made to en- 
dure as long as time shall last, to construct an empire 
the material greatness of which would be exceeded only 
by its moral grandeur, both wrought and crowned by 
the divine forces of Justice and Equality. The re- 
sources of this great empire are ample for the support 
in plenty and peace of a population equal to that of 
the entire world. The area of the United States, ex- 
cluding Alaska, is 2,970,000 square miles. An esti- 
mate, admitted to be too small, places the arable area 
at 1,500,000 square miles. China, which contains 
over 400,000,000 people, has a total area of 1,348,870 
square miles, not equalling one-half of ours. The 
Chinese are an agricultural people, and that vast mul- 



280 TENURE AND TOIL. 

titude obtains its support from the soil. The moun- 
tains and barren plains of China occupy over 300,000 
square miles, so that it is seen that our arable lands 
at the lowest estimate exceed those of China by one- 
half. The fact, therefore, that hundreds of millions 
of Chinese, with the rudest of implements, with no 
incentive to lift themselves out of the rut of ages, 
with a positive indisposition to adopt new and better 
methods, are supported by the agriculture of their 
country, ought certainly to be suggestive of the grand 
possibilities of America. Our agricultural resources 
alone fully developed would feed a billion of people, 
and uniting with these the great employing and sus- 
taining resources of our mineral wealth and manufac- 
turing industries, it is perfectly reasonable to assert that 
the United States can sustain with every comfort that 
should be sought and with every luxury that should 
not be shunned such a population. And yet in this 
land, as we have seen, are thousands who hunger and 
struggle with poverty until they die in penury. Why? 
Is it not because we fail to utilize the means provided 
by the bounteous Benefactor for their support? That 
the means are given is not denied. That they are not 
used is attested by the thousands of untilled acres found 
in every State of the Union. 

Labor should lay tribute upon these lands. The 
people should occupy them, — use them. This occu- 
pancy and use means industry, which builds homes and 
fills them with comfort and content, — homes which be- 
come the chapels of patriotism, the bulwarks of the 
nation, the temples of a common humanity. 



LAND-HOMES FOR THE HOMELESS. 281 

Of the 960,000,000 acres of arable area of the 
United States there were but 536,000,000 acres com- 
prised in farms, and of these nearly one-half was un- 
improved, a very large part of which belonged to farms 
containing more than 1000 acres. Thus we see that 
nearly three-fourths of our tillable acreage is unused, 
while thousands are deprived of that support which 
they themselves could secure from the possession and 
cultivation of the soil. These unused lands may be 
divided into four classes: (1) government lands, State 
and national ; (2) railroad lands ; (3) vast tracts belong- 
ing to individuals and syndicates (home and foreign) ; 
(4) the surplusage in farms exceeding 1000 acres. That 
the government (either State or national) has the right 
to give the lands included in the first class to the peo- 
ple for settlement and use will not be questioned, and 
that there should be a rigid enforcement of the con- 
tract by which the corporations were given the lands of 
the second class must be admitted as a matter of simple 
justice, and in every instance where the conditions 
have not been fully complied with in letter and spirit 
forfeitures should be declared which would add a vast 
and desirable acreage to the territory covered by the 
first class. Speculators and syndicates, whether home 
or foreign, should be compelled to relinquish all but a 
limited quantity of their immense holdings, and also 
those farmers or planters who own to exceed 1000 
acres, which can be done without impoverishing the 
few and yet enrich the many, by some such plan of 
procedure as the author suggests in a foregoing chapter. 
Upon these broad, fertile acres should live and labor 

24* 



282 TENURE AND TOIL. 

the great and ever-increasing surplus population of the 
towns and cities. 

It will be urged that every one can, under the home- 
stead law, now secure a home and become a land-owner 
in this country, and the fact that any one does not is 
proof conclusive that he does not desire to. A canvass 
of a half-dozen families in any of the poor quarters of 
any city will expose the fallacy of such an assumption 
by revealing the fact that there are many who would 
avail themselves of the benefits of the homestead act 
had they but the necessary means. The entry fee re- 
quired, it is true, is but a very small sum, and yet this 
pittance, as it seems to those who have plenty, to those 
who have nothing is a chance of life. This fee pro- 
vided for, then comes the expense of removal and the 
means to erect and furnish a house, provide food until 
a crop can be harvested, and purchase the necessary 
stock and implements for farming. All these are be- 
yond the reach of the poor, and, although willing and 
anxious to have them, they are forced to forego them, 
for their scanty earnings scarce provide the absolute 
necessaries of living as the days come and go. Doubt- 
less there are those in our towns and cities who have 
become so enervated and almost dehumanized by idle- 
ness, want, and wickedness that they would be loth to 
leave their haunts of wretchedness, and would shrink 
from a life and conditions involving effort and industry. 
To the credit of humanity, even in its lowest conditions, 
be it said that there are but few of these, when compared 
with the multitude, who would be voluntary workers 
if opportunity offered. To provide both classes with 



LAND-HOMES FOR THE HOMELESS. 283 

homes, with the necessary instruments of industry, and 
to see that by the faithful use of the latter they deserve 
and improve the former is clearly within the province 
of the government in the exercise of its most beneficent 
function in promoting the general welfare of the nation. 
By special enactment it should be provided that all 
male persons over twenty-one years of age, whether 
heads of families or not, who are not able to furnish 
the necessary comforts of life for themselves and fami- 
lies, either through inability to obtain work or an in- 
disposition to work, remove from the place in which 
they are residing and locate upon a tract .of public 
land, the size of which shall be regulated according to 
the number constituting the family. In the event of 
any one being unable to pay the entry-fee required, the 
cost of removal, and any other expenses incident to the 
occupancy and use of the land, then the government 
shall suspend the payment of the fee and provide for 
all the other outlay from the public treasury. Trans- 
portation, erection of a suitable house, stabling for stock, 
provisions for twelve months, necessary household fur- 
niture, farming implements, stock, and insurance would 
constitute the bill of expenditure. The settler should 
not only be compelled to reside upon and cultivate 
continuously for the term of five years the tract allotted 
him before receiving a patent therefor, but he should 
not be permitted to abandon the same during that time, 
and at no time within twenty-five years of its entry 
should the land be permitted to pass out of the pos- 
session of the family (or its descendants) to whom it 
was originally granted. 



284 TENURE AND TOIL. 

The settler should be required to pay in three annual 
instalments, beginning with the end of the third year 
of his occupancy of the land, to the government the 
amount expended by it in his behalf. A punishment 
of a penal nature should be provided for a failure on 
the part of the settler to make full payment of the an- 
nual instalment when due, to a suspension of which, 
of course, he would be entitled in the event of such 
inability having been caused by sickness, death, or 
failure of crops through some untoward action of the 
elements. If at the expiration of five years any an- 
nual instalment should be wholly or partly unpaid, 
the patent should not issue until the same is paid in 
full. Before the issuance of the patent the settler 
should not be permitted to sell, mortgage, exchange, or 
dispose of, in any way, any of the personal property 
furnished him by the government, and personal prop- 
erty of the same kind to the same amount must be 
always kept on the place free from mortgage or any 
incumbrance. No mortgage shall be valid upon all 
or any part of the original grant. 

The expenses of settlement on United States lands 
incurred might be divided between the national govern- 
ment and the State from which the settler removes, as 
the latter could well afford to bear part of the burden, 
as it would be relieved in many instances of positive 
or possible paupers and offenders, who would, should 
they remain, become costly charges or dangerous dis- 
turbers. 



THE COST AND THE PROFIT. 285 



CHAPTER VI. 

USE THE TREASURY SURPLUS TO PAY THE COST, 
THE HOME OWNER WILL PAY THE PROFIT. 

In this metallic age, " Will it pay ?" is the crucial 
question that promptly confronts the. suggestion of 
any action, whether it involves a feast or a funeral, a 
business venture or a pleasure parade, a material en- 
terprise or a moral reformation. A negative answer 
buries it beyond resurrection, an affirmative vivifies it 
with a virile vigor and electric energy that compel suc- 
cess. The plan proposed for relieving towns and cities 
of their suffering and dangerous classes, and giving 
work and homes to the unemployed thousands in our 
country, being in accordance with the dictates of com- 
mon sense and based upon the principles of equal and 
exact justice to all men, subjected to the most critical 
examination of intelligent utilitarianism, will, the writer 
believes, meet every exaction and conform to every 
condition imposed and required to insure national 
benefit and pecuniary profit. 

Various colonization societies have been and are 
engaged in locating families upon lands in the Western 
States and Territories. These societies have reduced 
colonization to a science, and from their reports we are 
able not merely to approximate, but to actually ascer- 
tain, the outlay necessary for homing a family and put- 
ting it in the way of becoming not only self-supporting 



286 TENURE AND TOIL. 

but of contributing to the wealth and power of the 
State. The land is owned by the government through 
its purchase or procurement by the people, so that in 
giving to any member of the national family a portion 
of the public domain the government but gives the 
donee that which belongs to him. 

In the matter of transportation figures cannot be 
given, as the cost would be determined by distance and 
number of persons composing the family. The same 
rates should be secured by legislation, if necessary, of 
the railway companies for the transportation of settlers 
under the plan proposed as these companies give to 
persons buying and locating upon lands tributary to 
their respective roads. This would not be placing a 
hardship upon the railroads, as they would, in the set- 
tlement, greatly profit through the consequent increase 
in travel and traffic, and in the end be far more 
than compensated for the reduction enforced. 

The land being free, transportation reduced to a min- 
imum, the following bill of costs presents a full and 
correct estimate of locating a family of five children 
and parents on a farm : 

Buildings : 

House ,$250.00 

Stabling for stock . 50.00 

Furniture : 

JSTo. 9 cook-stove, with outfit 22.00 

"Washing utensils, tubs, pails, etc 3.50 

Crockery and cutlery 5.00 

Three beds, three tables, chairs, etc 10.00 

Bedclothes 15.00 

Sundries 5.00 



THE COST AND THE PROFIT. 287 

Implements and farm tools : 

One wagon $50.00 

One 12-inch break-plough 16.00 

One 14-inch stubble-plough 12.00 

One yoke and chain 4.00 

One 5-feet break-harrow 7.00 

Small tools (spade, 90 cents ; shovel, $1.00) 1.90 

Hay-fork, manure-fork, two rakes 1.65 

Scythe and stone and snath, $1.75; hammer, 50 cents. 2.25 

Monkey-wrench, cold chisel, brace 1.25 

Three bits (J, J, and 1 inch) ; screw-driver, saw 3.00 

Square, $1.25; sundries, $3.75 5.00 

Food and fuel for one year : 

Three half-barrels pork 30.00 

Eighteen hundred pounds flour 45.00 

Groceries, tea, sugar, coffee, etc 30.00 

Potatoes to begin season (three months) 10.00 

Five cords fire-wood ... 32 50 

Sundries, soap, lights, salt, etc . 25.00 

Seeds (all will grow on first breaking) : 

Ten bushels flax 15.00 

Two " corn 1.00 

Six " potatoes 4.00 

Live-stock : 

One yoke of heavy oxen 125.00 

One cow 25.00 

Two hogs (young) 5.00 

Feed for stock 20.00 

Insurance on buildings and live stock for one year 2.50 

Total $834.55 

For less than one thousand dollars a family has been 
provided with a home and placed upon the line of 
industrious living, and the community in which they 
lived has been relieved of an actual or possible burden. 
Human hands fettered by enforced idleness or enervated 
by sloth have been unshackled and invigorated. The 



288 TENURE AND TOIL. 

willing have been given a chance, the unwilling sub- 
jected to the necessity of working, which is health and 
happiness and wealth. It has been said that every 
industrious and thrifty settler is worth one thousand 
dollars a year to the State. In a single year he pays 
back the expenditure required to secure for the State 
the benefits of his industry and thrift. 

According to the reports of the Commissioners of 
Poor Houses and Prisons in Massachusetts, the average 
yearly cost to the State of each prisoner is eighty-three 
dollars, and that of the poor one hundred and nine 
dollars and forty-five cents each. With the list of the 
criminal and poor growing each year, the expense of 
protection against the one and of support for the other 
increases. So in computing the actual cost of locating 
a family one must not fail to deduct the amount which 
it is possible the State would have to expend upon 
them if they were compelled to continue in the condi- 
tion from which the plan proposed would rescue them. 

The abode of poverty is the recruiting-station of 
pauperism and crime. Transfer its inmates to a home 
with pleasant surroundings, where the procurement of 
the necessaries of life is not only a possibility but a 
pleasure, and you transform them into good and inde- 
pendent citizens. 

In the national treasury there are over one hundred 
and eighty million dollars idle and unproductive. This 
vast sum belongs to the people from whom it has been 
exacted as taxes, and it should be used for the benefit 
and protection of those to whom it belongs. Taking 
one thousand dollars as the cost of locating a family, 



THE COST AND THE PROFIT. 289 

the surplus in the national treasury would house and 
help to become self-helping 180,000 families, an aggre- 
gate of 1,260,000 persons, — a population almost equal 
to that of Maine and Connecticut. Is it possible to 
conceive of any better use to which the unexpended 
millions of national wealth could be applied? Is it 
not patent to all that the outlay would not only be 
returned a hundredfold, and that as a matter of State 
and national economy the plan proposed should be 
adopted and applied, but that personal good and public 
safety, human advancement and national existence, 
demand it? 

That the necessity exists for the introduction and in- 
corporation of a new and better economic system into 
our national polity which will provide, among other 
things, for the relief of our over-populated cities and 
the legions of the unemployed swarming all over the 
land is not only admitted but contemplated with alarm 
by all who consider conditions and investigate causes in 
the great world of humanity. 

The troubles and dangers that confront us as a 
nation must be met and conquered within our own 
borders. There is no other possible escape. Emigra- 
tion has been the safety and salvation of Eastern lands. 
There can be no emigration from America. This is 
the Mecca of the human race, the final resting-place of 
unresting humanity. 

Earth's imperial people have ever moved westward 

as if impelled by a resistless power divine, and parallel 

with their migrations civilization and sovereignty 

moved. The world's sceptre has made the circuit of 

n t 25 



290 TENURE AND TOIL. 

the earth : first raised and wielded in Egypt, it passed 
to Greece, from Greece to Rome, from Rome to 
France, from France to England, and from England 
it is passing unto America; here to remain, for the 
Orient is just beyond us, — the land where it first arose. 
By the logic of causes that know no change the solu- 
tion of the problems, mighty and grave, which con- 
front us as a people must be reached through agencies 
of our own, and that solution not only involves the 
life of the nation, but it comprehends the future of the 
world. 



CHAPTER VII. 

NATIONAL PERILS AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY. 

The institutions of a country are inevitably moulded 
by its laws defining and determining the ownership 
and disposition of property in land. They who own 
the land are the rulers, and democracy to endure must 
be grounded in the soil. Individual freedom cannot 
be exercised under a government which permits the 
land through purchase or gift to pass into the hands of 
a few. A landed monopoly is destructive of democ- 
racy, and establishes upon its ruins an aristocracy 
whose rule is most galling and oppressive. With it a 
bold peasantry, a country's strength and pride, can- 
not exist, and its very presence is a relentless warfare 
against the normal life of the family. It engenders 



NATIONAL PERILS AND PROBLEMS. 291 

ignorance, penury, and crime, and brings the toiling 
millions into debasing subjection to the privileged few. 
Equality among the people can only be maintained 
through a great and permanent subdivision of the land, 
in the disposition of which the government should give 
no thought to immediate revenue, but its chief concern 
should be the homing of its people and the consequent 
building up of a true yeomanry that will insure its 
advancement and elevation in social and political virtue, 
keeping pace with its growth and progress in material 
development and wealth. Unfortunately, the founders 
of the republic, and those who have "moulded its legis- 
lation and shaped its policy in each successive genera- 
tion down to the present, considered the public domain 
as so much bullion, out of which must be coined the 
money to defray the expenses of government, or as the 
basis of mighty enterprises for material development 
of the country. Ignoring the great political truth that 
democratic equality finds its germ and growth in the 
soil, itself, they took no " bond of fate" to secure the 
well-being of the generations to come, but prepared 
the way and created the conditions for large monopolies 
which have continued to increase in number and size 
until now their magnitude is colossal and their might 
is masterful. Such is the legitimate result of selling 
vast tracts to speculators and companies, giving to rail- 
way corporations nearly 300,000,000 acres, enabling 
land-sharks to seize upon great bodies of land withheld 
from the people as Indian reservations through as 
pernicious a system of legislation as ever blotted a 
national statute, and, by legislation equally harmful and 



292 TENURE AND TOIL. 

inexcusable, placing it within the power of speculators 
and monopolists to obtain possession of thousands of 
acres under the guise of swamp-lands and by means 
of school, military, and Indian scrip. The present 
Homestead Law, which could not find a place in our 
land-system until for three-fourths of a century the 
public domain had been given up to the spoliation of 
speculators and sharpers, was hailed as the harbinger 
of a new and better era, yet it failed to work the 
emancipation of land from the grasping greed of monop- 
olists. With the rulings of the Department of the In- 
terior in the interest of corporations and the State and 
Federal courts under the domination of the landed 
monopoly, the rights of actual settlers meet oftener 
with " breach than observance." To such an extent 
has this vicious system of land legislation and adjudi- 
cation obtained that not more than one head of a family 
out of every five is a home-owner in this great republic. 
The curse of the land monopoly rests as a withering 
blight upon the prosperity of every State from the 
Alleghanies to the Pacific slope, and beneath its bale- 
ful shadow is multiplying a race of crouching and 
servile tenants. These facts are pregnant with fateful 
meaning. The system which is responsible for their 
existence must be destroyed, or the child is now living 
who will witness the overthrow of American democ- 
racy. Republican institutions cannot endure among 
a dishorned people. 

Subsidiary to the crime against the republic perpe- 
trated in the establishment of a landed monopoly is 
the evil which threatens the peace and perpetuity of 



NATIONAL PERILS AND PROBLEMS. 293 

our institutions, generated and intensified in the growth 
and domination of great cities. As we have shown, 
they are the abiding-places rather of frightful poverty 
than of enviable wealth, and in them are breeding the 
Goths and Vandals of modern civilization, threaten- 
ing, true to their teachings and environments, to play 
the part in our own fair land which their prototypes, 
swarming from jungles and forests, played in Europe 
in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries. The govern- 
ment of great cities is as yet an unknown art, and its 
discovery, to say nothing of its perfection, by the wisest 
publicists is deemed almost an impossibility through 
democratic methods. Our own experience is wholly in 
support of this view. Popular government in the 
United States outside of the cities is a success unques- 
tioned and unquestionable ; within them the record of 
the last score years proves it wellnigh an utter and 
ignominious failure. In the rural districts life and 
property is safe, education is generally diffused, social 
progress touches every one alike, equality of condition 
begets and fosters the spirit of fraternity and justice, 
the law is obeyed, and the registry of the ballot is the 
voice of the people. In the cities the public treasury 
is but a place for official pilfering, elective positions are 
articles of merchandise, legislatures are bartered for 
shekels, courts are bought by gilded rascals, and great 
numbers of men steeped in ignorance, penury, and 
drunkenness are made the dupes of reckless schemers 
and shameless demagogues who seek political prefer- 
ment that they may gorge themselves from the public 
flesh-pots. The picture is not overdrawn, but the 

25* 



294 TENURE AND TOIL. 

rather a faint outline of that which is practically illus- 
trated in the life of not only one, but all the metro- 
politan cities of the Union. Is not the apprehension 
well grounded, that, unless something is done to arrest 
the growth and elevate the character of the denizens of 
our cities, the American republic will find in them 
its decay and dissolution ? Consideration of these 
facts may well excite a profound concern for the future 
of our people. The tillers of the soil have ever been 
the hope and strength of a country. In the United 
States men are seeking to escape from agricultural pur- 
suits and yearning for the impassioned strife of city 
life. Can the Union endure the depletion of the farm- 
ing class and increasing unhealthful mastery of the 
hurtful elements which dominate the cities? Through 
the centralization of her population in the capital, 
which wrought the enslavement of her peasantry, Rome 
lost the sceptre of the world. History ever repeats 
itself. 

Another impending peril which confronts us is the 
expanding and absorbing power of mighty corporations, 
— the privileged creations of legislative invidiousness. 
To clothe private enterprises with corporate power is 
the prostitution of sovereignty through legislative 
license to the lust of official avarice. It fastens the 
till of dishonesty with the bar of knavery, and enables 
worthless sharpers to float inflated enterprises by se- 
curing some wealthy deacon for their decoy-duck and 
figure-head. Modern legislation enabling corporations 
to issue wild-cat securities ought to be wiped from the 
statute-books of every State in the Union. Corpora- 



NATIONAL PERILS AND PROBLEMS. 295 

tions should be the servants of the people, established 
for their convenience or necessity. When they cease 
to fill their true functions and seek to exercise a mas- 
tery, as they are doing, of those who created them, 
then the power that gave them existence should assert 
its prerogative of control over its own creation. The 
most formidable of all these are the railway corpora- 
tions, with an aggregate capital of ten billion dollars, 
their vast network of over one hundred thousand 
miles of track extending and ramifying over and 
through a continent, gathering into their coffers a bil- 
lion dollars every year, having in their service — a 
service characterized by a discipline as exacting and 
emasculating as that which transforms a soldier into 
a machine — over a quarter of a million of men, in- 
cluding the shrewdest and most unscrupulous financiers 
and the most learned and skilful legal talent of the 
nation, and securing the aid of every influence that 
consolidated wealth can buy or coerce. And this vast 
aggregation of ever-active agencies has no limit to its 
existence. Corporations never die. They are endowed 
with a greater power than the feudal barons of mediaeval 
Europe, and their very existence portends the ultimate 
subjugation of the people. The one inspiring princi- 
ple of democracy is that which involves an absolute 
denial of the 'divine right of kings and the unqualified 
demand for equal rights for all. Yet in the growth 
and presence of the corporation we have a new and 
most dangerous form of the one-man power and a 
deadly enemy to human equality. We view with sus- 
picion and oppose with every energy an attempt to 



296 TENURE AND TOIL. 

exalt one man thrice to the presidency, impelled by a 
latent fear of a contingent subversion of our political 
institutions ; yet these railway magnates, who often de- 
termine the result of a presidential election and control 
those who make and interpret the laws, virtually hold 
office for life, and are endowed with the amplest hered- 
itary powers. Here is food for reflection. 

Another danger, which in truth includes and is an 
outgrowth of the others referred to, is found in the 
burdens and wrongs imposed and inflicted upon labor 
by capital. A successful solution of the labor problem 
cannot be attained until in our political economy man 
is acknowledged to be superior to wealth, and as a con- 
sequent that the rights of the many are paramount to 
the privileges of the few. Then will follow the com- 
plete emancipation of labor from the practical owner- 
ship which now holds it in bondage, and unto it will 
be given an equitable portion of the wealth it produces 
in alliance with capital. The rights of labor must be 
recognized. It must cease to be considered a staple in 
trade like wheat and houses. The rights of the laborer 
are the rights of mankind. The full recognition of 
this truth is demanded by justice and humanity, and 
until it obtains in full force and practice throughout 
every workshop in the land, and wherever hands are 
toiling that minds may build and bodies grow, there 
will be wrong and poverty and wretchedness leading to 
rapine, ruin, and death. 

How to eradicate the evils enumerated from our 
national organism is the grand problem which pre- 
sents itself to American statesmanship to-day, and the 



NATIONAL PERILS AND PROBLEMS. 297 

deferment of its solution is fraught with danger to the 
republic. 

The writer believes that all the evils pointed out 
find their origin and increase, either as cause or effect, 
in the false relations existing between the people and 
the land and between labor and capital, and that until 
these relations are established upon the natural and 
divine principles of man's common property in the land 
and the right of Toil to share in its fruits these evils 
will intensify even unto the utter destruction of every 
vestige of American democracy. The people must 
assert themselves. There must be conference in coun- 
sel and concert in action among the true, the brave, and 
the faithful friends of humanity in every State. To 
such the author submits this book, with the confidence 
that if the measures proposed and legislation suggested 
are not found equal to the exigencies of the reforma- 
tion demanded a thoughtful consideration of them will 
contribute to the devising and perfecting of means and 
methods whereby the great and good work will be ac- 
complished. This grand work does not find its true 
scope in the highest advancement of privileged indi- 
viduals or classes, or the concentration of immense wealth 
in the hands of a few, but in the uttermost development 
and paramount well-being of all. It is not the excep- 
tional enlightenment or superior benefit of the minority, 
but the upbuilding of the lowly and humble multitudes. 
It will be done. It must be done. There may be sea- 
sons of woful waiting and dangerous delays. The 
insatiate greed of pelf, blind to its interests, unmindful 
of its own safety, may carry its utter disregard for the 



298 TENURE AND TOIL. 

rights of humanity to such a point as to drive the 
people into violence and revolution, but at the great 
finale the people will be triumphant. All things fore- 
shadow this result. It will be the conflict between right 
and wrong, with every divine force arrayed in invincible 
power with the former. Justice and right cannot, will 
not, be defeated. Whether the triumph shall come 
through peace or war depends wholly upon the prompt 
and judicious use of opportunities offered. The time 
is opportune now for action. 



APPENDIX. 



CONVICT LABOR. 

LEGISLATION PEOPOSED. 

The subject of convict labor ought not only to 
incite the laudable efforts of the humanitarian and 
philanthropist, but the best and wisest thought of the 
economist and publicist. Imprisonment as a punish- 
ment for the infraction of law is necessary for the pro- 
tection of society, and as solitary confinement is a relic 
of barbarism, which would not be tolerated in this age 
and clime, all considerations looking to a discussion of 
that phase of the question must be dismissed without 
comment. Indeed, the practical phase of the question, 
as to whether the labor and the manufactured articles 
produced by free men must compete with the prices 
paid for convict labor and its productions, has, of late 
years, received serious attention in the discussion of 
economic subjects. 

In February, 1887, the author prepared a bill re- 
lating to convict labor, which he forwarded to one of 
the senators in the Illinois General Assembly, then in 
session, with a request to introduce it in the Senate, or 

procure its introduction in the House, in order, if pos- 

299 



300 TENURE AND TOIL. 

sible, to have the subject-matter thereof discussed by 
the Assembly; but aside from the mere perfunctory 
courtesy of introducing the bill it received no atten- 
tion from that body, sharing the fate which but too 
commonly befalls all measures presented to legislative 
bodies not involving partisan dogmas or political job- 
bery. Subjected to critical examination by men con- 
versant with the needs and schooled in the wisdom of 
legislation, it is believed this bill, which is here given 
in substance as hastily prepared, would serve at least 
as the basis of a judicious and practical solution of this 
important question : 

A BILL FOE AN ACT RELATING TO CONVICT LABOR. 

Section 1. Be it enacted, etc., There is hereby 
created a board of convict labor commissioners, com- 
posed of three persons to be appointed by the governor 
of this State, by and with the consent of the Senate, 
at a salary of three thousand five hundred dollars per 
year each, whose term of office shall commence on the 
first day of May, 1887, and continue for two years 
thereafter, unless sooner removed by the governor, as 
hereinafter provided. 

Sec. 2. It shall be the duty of said board imme- 
diately after its appointment to meet at the city of 
Springfield and consult with the governor, auditor, 
and secretary of state as to the best and most advisa- 
ble manner in which to make the purchase of and to 
maintain in the penitentiaries of this State sufficient 
and suitable machinery for the manufacture of boots, 



APPENDIX. 301 

shoes, hats, caps, and wearing apparel of every kind 
such as is worn and used by the inmates of the several 
institutions of this State, and also for the manufacture 
of furniture, beds, and bedding such as is required in 
the several institutions of this State. 

Sec. 3. It shall be the duty of the auditor of state to 
procure and complete forthwith, within sixty days from 
the taking effect of this law, a full statement of all the 
moneys paid out by the State for the different articles 
of wearing apparel used by the inmates of State institu- 
tions, and for all articles of furniture, beds, and bed- 
ding furnished and purchased for the various institu- 
tions of this State ; and in order to assist the auditor of 
state to make his said report it is hereby made the 
duty of the officers of the various institutions, when 
notified by the auditor of state, to furnish him a de- 
tailed statement within thirty days after the receipt of 
such notification, setting forth therein the cost of all 
articles purchased for their several institutions during 
the fiscal year preceding, whether such costs have been 
paid by the county or out of the State treasury. And 
far the refusal of any such officer to furnish such report 
he shall be liable to a penalty of twenty-five dollars a 
day, to be recovered for the use of and in the name of 
the People of the State of Illinois. 

Sec 4. It shall be the duty of said board of com- 
missioners to assign such a number of convicts as may 
be required to manufacture each article hereinabove 
contemplated for the use of all State institutions in this 
State, and to purchase such tools, appliances, and 
machinery as in the judgment of said board, after con- 

26 



302 TENURE AND TOIL. 

sultation with the governor, auditor, and secretary of 
state, it will be deemed necessary to carry out the 
object of this bill. 

Sec. 5. Each convict assigned to manufacture said 
articles shall not be required to work more than eight 
hours per day of each working-day, and it shall be the 
duty of said board to see that some competent person, 
skilled in the manufacture of each particular article so 
to be furnished, shall give instructions to the convicts 
in the proper use of tools and machinery used in their 
respective departments for at least one hour each day, 
and it shall also be the duty of such board to see that 
the convicts receive instruction for at least one hour 
each day in common English branches. 

Sec. 6. Every convict who shall comply with all the 
rules of the institution and who shall not be guilty of 
any breach of prison discipline shall receive at the 
expiration of his term of imprisonment the sum of 
ten cents for each and every day's work performed by 
him, and in case any convict shall be guilty of a breach 
of any of the rules of prison discipline, the wardens 
of the several penitentiaries shall make, keep, and pre- 
serve a record of the same, specifying wherein such 
convict was guilty of such breach of the rules of prison 
discipline, and every convict so guilty shall not be 
entitled to receive any compensation for any day of 
that week in which he has violated said rules. 

Sec. 7. When the needs of all the State institutions 
shall be supplied with articles of furniture, beds, bed- 
ding, boots, shoes, and wearing apparel of every kind, 
if any surplus remain such surplus shall be assigned 



APPENDIX. 303 

to the various counties of this State, in proportion to 
their inhabitants, to be distributed among the deserving 
poor of such counties in such manner as the board of 
supervisors of the respective counties may, by resolu- 
tion, determine. 

Sec. 8. The governor may remove any of the com- 
missioners appointed by him as hereinbefore specified 
for any cause which in his judgment will warrant 
such removal, and it shall not be necessary for him to 
specify or state such cause to the person so removed, 
and it is hereby made the duty of the governor to 
remove any such commissioner so appointed if in his 
judgment a person better qualified to carry out the 
intent and meaning of this bill may be found to take 
the place of the person so removed ; 'provided, the 
person so removed shall not be entitled to compensa- 
tion after the date of his removal. 

Sec. 9. No article which can be produced by hand 
shall be manufactured by machinery, nor shall any 
machinery for the manufacture of such articles be pur- 
chased except for the purpose of instructing the con- 
victs in the use of machinery commonly used in the 
manufacture of articles similar to those manufactured 
by them in their respective departments. 

Sec. 10. There is hereby appropriated out of the 
State treasury the sum of one hundred thousand dollars 
for the purpose of carrying out the object and intent 
of this bill, the same to be paid from time to time on 
warrants drawn on the auditor of state, which war- 
rants shall be accompanied by a voucher of the person 
receiving the same, and approved by the board of com- 



304 TENURE AND TOIL. 

missioners, specifying the article of machinery or other 
object for which such voucher is issued. 

A section might be added prohibiting the sale within 
the State of any article produced by convict labor, 
whether manufactured within or without the State. In 
the many attempts of the Supreme Court of the United 
States to draw the line between the power of the State 
and the Federal government the soundness of the doc- 
trine has never been questioned, that the State may 
prohibit convicts, paupers, idiots, lunatics, and persons 
likely to become a public charge, as well as persons or 
animals afflicted by contagious diseases, coming within 
her limits. The right to exclude articles manufactured 
by convicts in foreign States would necessarily follow as 
incident to the power to exclude convicts, especially 
when the State which adopts the law prohibits the sale 
of the products manufactured by her own convicts. 

While I think the candid reader will admit that the 
plan embodied in the foregoing bill is simple in its pro- 
visions, direct in its purpose, and comprehends the en- 
tire subject, yet I do not claim absolute perfection for 
it, or that it should be passed by the legislature without 
being amended in such manner as the wisdom of that 
august body may suggest, but I do consider it free 
from all the objections urged against the enforcement 
of a constitutional amendment prohibiting the hiring 
out of convict labor as well as that urged against the pro- 
duct of such labor being brought into competition with 
free labor. I feel perfectly safe in asserting that if a 



APPENDIX. 305 

legislature would call for and obtain a statement as to 
the expenditures by the State and the several counties 
thereof, for the purchase of the articles for the manu- 
facture of which this bill provides, that it will far 
exceed the amount of money received by the State from 
contractors for the service of convicts. Economv, 
therefore, commends this plan as lightening the bur- 
den of the tax-payers, but in dealing with this matter 
law-makers should be governed by higher motives than 
those prompted by pecuniary considerations, and when 
considered from a philanthropic stand-point, — which is 
the true one, — or from the platform of a wise publicist, 
it must be admitted that the adoption of such a 
measure would contribute to the well-being and happi- 
ness of humanity by reason of the instruction and 
elevation of those unfortunate human beings, some of 
whom are consigned to long years of imprisonment for 
the commission of petty offences, which they might not 
have committed had they been able to earn a livelihood 
by honest industry in the plying of some trade or avo- 
cation. These unhappy creatures, oftentimes the vic- 
tims of circumstances or the products of conditions, 
thus condemned to servitude, are worse off than were 
the slaves in the South, for they toiled in the open 
fields, warmed by the sunlight, breathing the fresh, 
pure air of heaven, and while driven by the lash of the 
cruel taskmaster their toils were lightened and their 
scourging was deprived of half its sting in the hope 
assured of being supplied with food, raiment, and shelter 
in their declining years ; but the poor convict, breathing 
the prison's foul air, filling his body with the germs of 
u 26* 



306 TENURE AND TOIL. 

disease, drags his lengthening chain of toil unto the 
end without hope or heart for the future. His term 
of servitude expires and he is turned adrift into the 
world. Society will not receive him, that society 
the perverted conditions of which perchance made his 
transgression not only possible, but almost inevitable. 
Every avenue leading to the position he occupied before 
the commission of the offence which branded him as a 
felon and every opportunity to re-establish himself 
in the good graces and esteem of his fellow-men are 
barred against him. This is neither just nor humane. 
The object of all punishment should be reformatory, 
not retaliatory. If those convicts who are sentenced 
for long terms — many of them for a first offence — were 
treated with kindness, instructed in the common Eng- 
lish branches, trained in some useful line of industry, 
taught to believe that every man owes a duty to society 
from which naught can absolve him, inspired with the 
assurance that they can regain their place among men, 
and then, when their imprisonment ends, given sufficient 
means to enable them to seek new fields and new sur- 
roundings, in a short time the penitentiaries would not 
be overcrowded as now, the State would grow stronger 
in good citizenship, society gain many useful mem- 
bers, and humanity be greatly and grandly benefited. 
It is true that some convicts seem to be beyond recla- 
mation, but the true object of government and the 
purpose of all law are to conserve the public good, 
and as for those who deserve speedy and condign 
punishment for repeated offences of a gross and grave 
character, the habitual criminals' act and others of like 



APPENDIX. 307 

import will be found sufficient to protect society against 
those whose reformation is hopeless. As to the amount 
of money necessary to carry out the provisions of the 
bill, it may be urged that one hundred thousand dollars 
would be inadequate. Let two hundred and fifty 
thousand dollars be appropriated for this purpose, and 
it will be found amply sufficient in any State in the 
Union. The prime object of the bill I propose is to 
instruct, educate, and reform the convicts, and to make 
shoemakers, tailors, carpenters, masons ; in a word, to 
make out of them mechanics, and to keep them at work 
while in prison ; and as it is imperative, in order to 
carry out the full scope and purpose of the measure 
proposed, that the greater part of their work should be 
done by hand, the quantity produced being of minor 
importance, it will be necessary only to purchase costly 
machinery for the purpose of instructing them in its 
use. The surplus articles produced under this plan 
could be distributed to most excellent advantage among 
those deserving poor in every community* who, though 
reduced to penury, are very loth to become a charge 
upon the public bounty. 

It must be admitted that the adoption of the meas- 
ure I propose, or one very similar to it, will obviate 
every serious objection and answer any tenable argu- 
ment not only against convicts being hired out to con- 
tractors, but also against the products of their labor 
being brought into competition with free labor. All 
that can be truthfully urged against my plan, under 
any circumstances, is that its operation implies the 
withdrawal of the State institutions from the market 



308 TENURE AND TOIL. 

as purchasers, and to that extent would lessen the con- 
sumption of the products of free labor. But this 
could not be deemed an objection of vital or controlling 
importance, for the reason, admitted of all fair-minded 
men, that free labor, labor unions, knights of labor, and 
all other industrial organizations must, in the spirit of 
good citizenship, in common with all members of society, 
make some sacrifices when such sacrifices are necessary 
for the common weal. 

Since preparing the foregoing bill and writing the 
above suggestions in February, 1887, I have taken 
occasion to look into the reports of penal institutions 
and of bureaus of statistics of the several States and 
of various countries as collected in the Second Annual 
Report of United States Commissioner Wright, and I 
find the bill, even in its crude state, meets nearly every 
requirement of the best and most advanced thought on 
the subject. Indeed, it contains provisions which ob- 
viate many of the difficulties which the learned com- 
missioner of labor encountered in discussing the ad- 
vantages and disadvantages of the various systems and 
plans proposed, in that it provides not only for the 
manufacture of the various articles by hand, but for 
the instruction of the convicts in the use of tools 
and improved machinery, such as are commonly used 
for the manufacture of such articles. Thus the con- 
vict who spent his term of sentence on hand- made 
goods, and who, at the same time, was properly in- 
structed in the use of machinery for the manufacture 
of such goods, would, when discharged, be fully 



APPENDIX. 309 

qualified to enter any workshop or factory and earn an 
honest living. It also provides for the disposal of all 
surplus articles produced. 

Any one who will take the trouble to examine the 
historical notes presented by the Commissioner of 
Labor in his most valuable report will be astonished to 
discover how far we are behind our sister republics of 
South America in the matter of prison discipline for 
the reformation of convicts. Indeed, in this respect, 
to our shame be it said, we have not kept pace with the 
humanity of the age. In the penitentiary of the State 
of Boyaca, United States of Columbia, for example, 
there is in use a progressive system of classification, 
rewards, etc. In the first grade the prisoner is confined 
for the most part of the time in a separate cell, going 
out only to his meals, chapel, and to do small portions 
of household work. This lasts for from one to four 
months. In the second grade his style of clothing is 
changed, his fare is better, he is allowed to talk at 
meals, and is marked each day for conduct, labor, etc. 
Gaining six hundred marks, he goes into the last grade ; 
there he finds stilkgreater material comfort, and sleeps 
no longer in a cell, but in a dormitory with his entire 
grade. He may talk in the workshops also ; may be 
employed as a guard or in prison offices ; may even go 
outside the gates on errands ; and when he has served 
in this grade the third part of his term of imprison- 
ment, may be recommended for pardon. On leaving 
the establishment he receives a sum equal to fifteen 
cents a week for all the time served in this highest 
grade. Similar rules of discipline and pecuniary com- 



310 TENURE AND TOIL. 

pensation is provided for the reformation, reclamation, 
education, and elevation of convicts in every State 
of the South American republics. Humanity and 
public policy alike require that something should be 
done immediately to check the commission of crime by 
making provision for housing the poor and reforming 
the criminal. 

THE ENCROACHMENTS OF CONVICT LABOR UPON 
FREE LABOR. 

The encroachments of convict labor upon free 
labor are very pertinently presented in that portion of 
the Second Annual Report of United States Commis- 
sioner Wright, of the Bureau of Labor, directed spe- 
cially to convict labor in the United States. From the 
figures there given it appears that the total number of 
prisoners of all grades employed in the penal institu- 
tions is 64,349, the males numbering 58,454, and the 
females 5895. Of this total number, 45,277 are en- 
gaged in productive labor of some kind, 15,100 are 
engaged in prison duties, and 3972 are sick or idle. 
Of the total number, 14,827 are employed under the 
public-account system, 15,670 under the contract sys- 
tem, 5676 under the piece-price system, and 9104 
under the lease system. 

This prison population, in proportion to the popula- 
tion of the United States, as here estimated, is 1 in 
930 ; but the proportion to those engaged in mechanical, 
agricultural, and mining pursuits in the whole country 
is about 1 convict to every 300 persons so employed. 



APPENDIX. 311 

The summary by States shows that there is a total 
of 44,512 long-term convicts, 33,661 being employed 
in productive labor, 8146 in prison duties, 2705 idle 
and sick, with 233 contractors or lessees. In houses 
of correction, workhouses, and jails there is a total of 
9839 convicts, 5859 being engaged in productive 
labor, 3205 in prison duties, and 775 idle and sick, 
the number of contractors or lessees being 30. The 
number of inmates in industrial and reform schools, 
and other institutions where short-term prisoners are 
temporarily employed, is 9998, of which number 5757 
are engaged in productive labor, 3749 in prison duties, 
and 492 idle and sick, while the number of contrac- 
tors or lessees is 28. 

The industry employing the greatest number is that 
of the manufacture of boots and shoes, in which 7476 
males and 133 females, or a total of 7609 prisoners, 
are engaged. The industry coming next to boots and 
shoes, so far as persons employed are concerned, is 
clothing, engaging 5561, while stone employs 4876 ; 
then come farming, gardening, etc., with 3569, furni- 
ture, employing 3446, and mining, 3273. 

The total value of goods made and work done by 
productive labor in the penal institutions of the whole 
country was $28,753,999.13. It took 45,277 convicts 
one year to produce this total value. It would have 
taken 35,534 free laborers to have produced the same 
quantity of goods in the same time ; or, in other words, 
a free laborer is equal to 1.27 convict, or to reverse the 
statement, one convict is equal to .78 of a free laborer. 
The State producing the largest amount of convict-made 



312 TENURE AND TOIL. 

goods is New York, the value there being $6,236,- 
320.98. The next State in rank is Illinois, producing 
$3,284,267.50 worth of convict-made goods. Indiana 
comes next with a product of the value of $1,570,- 
901.37, while Ohio stands next in line with a product 
of the value of $1,368,122.51 ; then Missouri, $1,342,- 
020.07; then Pennsylvania, $1,317,265.85. Kansas 
ranks next, with a product of $1,270,575.77. Tennessee 
comes after Kansas, with only $1,142,000; then Michi- 
gan, $1,087,735.62 ; and last of the States producing 
over a million dollars' worth, New Jersey, $1,019,- 
608.32. Each of the other States and Territories 
dropped below the million-dollar point, Dakota coming 
at the bottom of the list with a product of $11,577.36. 
It is interesting to examine these values by industries. 
Boots and shoes lead, the product being $10,100,279.61, 
or 35.13 per cent, of the whole product of the penal 
institutions of the country, $28,753,999.13 ; the next 
largest item being the manufacture of clothing, which 
is $2,199,634.25, while carriages and wagons are manu- 
factured to the value of $1,989,790. In all other in- 
dustries the product is less than $2,000,000, the 
smallest being lumber to the value of $63,890. 

The penal institutions of the first class employed 
33,661 convicts on productive labor out of the total of 
45,277 (or 74.34 per cent.), producing $24,859,810.31 
worth of products (or 86.46 per cent, of the whole 
product). This product would have required 27,912 
free laborers to have produced it, considering one free 
laborer in this class equal to 1.20 convict. The bulk 
of the goods made, then, in the prisons of the United 



APPENDIX. 313 



States is produced by the long-term prisoners. The 
convicts in the houses of correction, etc., produced 
$2 150,959.07 worth of product, or 7.48 per cent, of 
the whole, while thev were in number 5859, or 12.94 
per cent, of the whole. These goods might have been 
produced by 4139 free laborers ; that is, in institutions 
of this class, one free laborer is equal to 1.42 convict 
The short-term prisoners produced but $1,743,229.75 
worth of goods, being 6.06 per cent, of the total pro- 
duct of all institutions. To produce these goods required 
5757 convicts (or 12.72 per cent, of all), and they 
micht have been produced by 3483 free laborers; that 
is , In this class, one free laborer is equal to 1.65 convict. 
Under the public-account system the value of goods 
made is $4,086,637.87, or 14.21 per cent, of the total 
product, while under the contract system the value is 
$18,096,245.74, or 62.94 per cent, of the total product. 
• Under the piece-price system goods are made to the 
value of $2,379,180.52, being 8.27 per cent, of the 
total product, and under the lease system the value pf 
goods made is $4,191,935, or 14.58 per cent, of the 

total product. . , 

Under the contract system, those industries produc- 
ing the greatest total value are carried on under this 
system, as, for instance, the total product of boots and 
shoes in all the prisons of the country is $10 100 - 
279 61 Of this total, boots and shoes to the value ot 
$8 861,771.91 are produced under the contract system. 
1 Wh tever competition with free labor arises from 
the employment of convicts should be considered ^from 
three points of view: First, the competition with all 



314 TENURE AND TOIL. 

the industries of the country ; second, the competition 
with special industries ; and third, the competition in 
States or special localities. In regard to the compe- 
tition with the industries of the whole country a few 
figures will suffice. The total manufactured products 
of the United States, according to the tenth census, 
amounted to $5,369,579,191. The total product of all 
the penal institutions amounted to $28,753,999, which 
is -ffo of 1 per cent, of the value of the total products 
of the industries of the country. To produce the pro- 
ducts of the industries of the whole country in 1880 
there were paid in wages $947,953,795, or $1 in wages 
to $5.66 in product. The wages paid by contractors 
and lessees to States and counties for the labor of con- 
victs was $3,512,970, or $1 in convict-labor wages to 
$8.19 of product of convict labor. 

The amount of competition in each of the leading 
industries and the competition in each State are matters 
of special interest. Take boots and shoes, for instance : 
The per-capita product of free labor for the year is 
$1492 in all the States in which boots and shoes are 
manufactured in prisons, while the per capita for con- 
vict labor is $1327 per annum. The product for all 
States, whether employing convicts on boots and shoes 
or not, is $1496. These values show that, so far as boots 
and shoes are concerned, the convict produces as much 
per annum as the free laborer, lacking $169 per capita. 
In boots and shoes alone, in all the States wherein 
they are made in prison, $1 of prison product is rep- 
resented by $18.23 of free-labor product. Of the per- 
sons employed in their manufacture, there is one convict 



APPENDIX. 315 

employed to 16.2 free laborers. In New York, the 
heaviest boot and shoe State, so far as prisons are con- 
cerned, there is one convict employed in this industry 
to eight free laborers, while in Massachusetts, the 
largest producing State in boots and shoes, there is one 
convict employed to 111.7 free laborers. 

The total product of all industries of the United 
States for 1880, as already stated, was $5,369,579,191, 
produced by 2,732,595 employes, a per-capita produc- 
tion of $1965. The total product of convict labor 
was $28,753,999, by 45,277 convicts, being a per-capita 
prison production of $635. 

These figures are full of meaning, full of instruction, 
full of food for intelligent reflection. The products of 
convict labor ought not to be brought into competition 
with honest industry. To do so can have no other ef- 
fect than to cripple manufacturers, reduce the wages of 
mechanics, and increase pauperism and its concomitant 
evil, crime. The State has no right to make money at 
the expense of the well-being and prosperity of her 
people. She has no right to sell human beings, body 
and soul, for pelf. To do so is no less criminal than 
it would be to license houses of ill repute for the pur- 
pose of revenue. No one is really benefited from the 
sale of contract labor but the contractor who is enabled 
to get rich out of the crimes of others. The State 
needs not wealth : the people are her stay, support, and 
safeguard. The people are the State. Less criminal 
was it to seize and take by force and stealth the untu- 
tored savage from the jungles of Africa and sell him 
into slavery than it is to confine convicts for a term of 



316 TENURE AND TOIL. 

years in a place where they are driven by the lash of 
the taskmaster, where every barrier is thrown in the 
way of their civilization and reformation. Nine out 
of every ten of those committed to prison or confined 
in the penitentiary necessarily return and mingle with 
society, and if their conditions and surroundings 
during detention have rendered them more hardened, 
vicious, and brutal than before, our whole theory of 
penal institutions is a miserable, pitiable failure. 



THE END. 






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